University of Wollongong Research Online
University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections
1997
Too many students, not enough jobs?: a comparative study of Australian journalism programs
Roger Martindale Patching University of Wollongong
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Recommended Citation Patching, Roger Martindale, Too many students, not enough jobs?: a comparative study of Australian journalism programs, Master of Arts (Hons.) thesis, Graduate School of Journalism, University of Wollongong, 1997. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/2257
Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] TOO MANY STUDENTS, NOT ENOUGH JOBS?:
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN JOURNALISM PROGRAMS
UNIVERSiTY Of WOLLONGOfsICi ttanAiy A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree
Master of Arts (Honours)
from
University of Wollongong
by
Roger Martindale Patching, BA (Qld)
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM,
FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS
1997. CERTIFICATION
I certify that the work analysed in the thesis titled "Too many students, not enough jobs?; a comparative study of Australian journalism education" is entirely my own work. References to the work of others are identified in the text. This work has not been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma at any other university.
Roger Patching February 1997 ABSTRACT
TOO MANY STUDENTS, NOT ENOUGH JOBS?:
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN JOURNALISM
EDUCATION
By the late 1990's, Australia had become one of the largest providers
of academic journalism education in the world. More than half of
Australia's universities offered courses in journalism practice and studies.
This educational phenomenon occurred largely in the late 1980's and
through the 1990's as university administrators searched assiduously for
new growth areas to offset dwindling numbers in traditional areas of
academic study. In early 1997, 22 of Australia's 37 univesities offered
vocationally-oriented journalism courses, and more were projected. In
conjunction with the rapid growth of communications courses in the
years following World War 11, and the surge of interest in cultural studies
from the early 1990's, journalism represented a booming sub-sector in an
educational market where many traditional areas were losing student
appeal.
This thesis does not try to account for the journalism phenomenon in Australian tertiary education, or to predict its future in any detail. Basically, it has two objectives:
(1) to provide an overview of the organisation, content and
professionalism of journalism educastion as it had evolved by the late
1990's;
(2) to assess the validity of the outcomes of journalism education
in the context of an increasingly diversified job market and the certainty of
rapid change in the professional role of the traditional journalist.
The principal methodological tool employed in this analysis has
been a comprehensive survey of each of all 22 journalism courses
functioning in 1995-96.
Chapter 1 considers previous attempts to survey and synthesise the
contemporary history and development of journalism education in
Australia. It briefly lists and summarises the work of a number of
previous analysts, pointing to the merits of these approaches while
concluding that in total they provided l;ittle relevant guidance to the
overall organisation and content of specific courses. The chapter also
describes in some detail the character and dimensions of the survey of 22
courses undertaken by the candidate. (Complete details of the survey
questionnaire and the analysis based on it are set out in Appendices 1 and
2/).
In Chapter 2, the evolution of journalism education from the early
1970's to the late 1990's is outlined. It considers the location of the courses in the context of state boundaries and regional identifications, noting particularly distortions in the provision of courses across Australia, such as the concentration of a disproportionate number of courses relative to population in South East Queensland. It suggests a picture of often irrational development with a glut of courses at some points and none in others; for example, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
Chapter 3 provides a comparative content analysis of existing courses, looking at a number of key variables including number of subjects, breakdown of compulsory and elective subjects, split of subjects between theory and practice, representation of crucial areas of professional journalism, such as law and ethics, existence of practical outlets such as newspapers and broadcast programs, industry and union support, access to professional equipment, opportunities for professional experience and internships.
Chapter 4 looks in more detail at supply and demand factors in the functioning of journalism education. In short, it tries to match the demand for journalism courses, as reflected in student entry and number of graduates with the supply of jobs in the news media industry. Using estimates prepared by other analyists as a starting point, the candidate applies material collected from his survey to predict the annual number of graduates from journalism courses relative to the number of new job opporunities emerging each year in mainstream news media. He concludes that there is a significant imbalance, with the number of graduates exceeding available new jobs by a factor of three to one. It is also noted that part of the shortfall in undoubtedly taken up by new areas of journalistic employment such as desktop publishing, internet services, and other multi-media production. Chapter Five considers the staffing of journalism courses, the experience and quahfications of journaUsm educators, and their workloads. The analysis detects a gradual increase in the size of the journalism education cadre and, more directly, in their qualifications and teaching expertise. It finds, however, that journalism courses and inevitably under-staffed relative to the workload of colleagues in other disciplines, and that their work if often under-valued by the news media industry.
Chapter 6 draws together the principal findings of the survey, offering a brief over-view of the current circumstances of journalism education in a context of increasing administrative turbulence and volatility in conceptual approaches to the role of Australian universities and what should be taught in them. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My principal debt is to the 25 course co-ordinators and senior journalism academics from 22 Australioan universities who contributed to the survey on which this thesis is based. I thank the School of communications at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, and the Graduate
School of Journalism at the University of Wollongong for administrative and financial support. Contents
Page Certification 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 6 Contents 7 Abbreviations 8
CHAPTER ONE - Introduction 9
CHAPTER TWO - Three Decades of Journalism Education
in Australia 26
CHAPTER THREE - Comparing the Courses 46
CHAPTER FOUR - How many study journalism in Australia
and where do they find work? 94
CHAPTER FIVE - Who Are the Teachers? 115
CHAPTER SIX - Conclusions and Discussion 134
BIBLIOGRAPHY 143
Appendix 1 - The Questionnaire
Appendix 2 - Diagramatic Representations of all Courses Abbreviations:
AATEJ Australian Association for Tertiary Education in Journalism ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission ACEJMC Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (US) ACIJ Australian Centre for Independent Journalism AEJMC Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication AJA Australian Journalists Association CAE College of Advanced Education CAR Computer Assisted Reporting CBAA Community Broadcasting Association of Australia CQU Central Queensland University CSU Charles Sturt University DEET Department of Employment, Education and Training DEETYA Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs DTP Desktop Publishing EFl'SU Effective Full Time Student Units ENG Electronic News Gathering FARB Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters HTML Hypertext markup language (for Internet home pages) lAE Institute of Advanced Education JEA Journalism Education Association JET Journalism Education and Training (Committee) MCAE Mitchell College of Advanced Education MEAA Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance NCTJ National Council for Training Journalists (UK) PANPA Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association PhD Doctor of Philosophy PRN Public Radio News QUT Queensland University of Technology RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology SBS Special Broadcasting Service SMH The Sydney Morning Herald TER Tertiary Entrance Ranking UCQ University of Central Queensland UOW University of Wollongong UQ University of Queensland USQ University of Southern Queensland UTS University of Technology Sydney UWS University of Western Sydney Chapter 1
Introduction
Undergraduate vocation-based journalism programs have been taught at AustraHan tertiary institutions since the first course began at the
University of Western Australia in 1919 (Dunlevy 1976, p. 6). At the beginning of the 1997 academic year there were courses at 21 publicly- funded Universities and one private University (Bond). Stand alone postgraduate programs began at Wollongong and Murdoch Universities in the 1990's. While a few courses were available at traditional universities in the early 1970's, the creation of the Colleges of Advanced Education tertiary sector at the end of the 1960's (Mitchell College of Advanced
Education Prospectus 1971) saw a rapid growth in the number of vocational journalism courses in the years that followed. Half the current courses began around the 1970's ~ five at Colleges of Advanced Education, four at (and in one case still) Institutes of Technology and the other two at the University of Queensland and the Gordon Institute of Technology
(which became Deakin University in the mid-1970's). The candidate decided to put the Gordon course under a university label, because while all CAE's became universities under the Federal Government's forced amalgamations of the late 1980's, Deakin University was created in 1974
(Stuart 1996). A further four courses began in the 1980's and the remaining seven ~ almost a third of the current number — have begun in the seven years to 1996, including four in 1995 - 96 (Patching 1996). Background to survey
Attempts have been made over the past 20 years by various
interested groups -- the Austrahan Journalists' Association (now the
Media, Entertainment and Arts AUiance -- MEAA), the Journalism
Education Association (JEA), individual academics and working
journalists -- to examine the various tertiary education courses teaching
vocational journalism. No serious attempt has yet been made to compare
the courses over more than a superficial range of criteria. The candidate's
survey compares the existing 22 courses over a wide range of areas.
One of the problems for researchers in the past has been the
different approaches to journalism education at the various institutions,
their differing course structures, admission arrangements and academic
nomenclature. Some attempts have also been too broad in their scope to
be useful in this context, notably the Harry Irwin paper of the early 1980's
(Irwin 1984) and Bruce Malloy's major communication courses study of
1989-90 (Malloy 1990). Comparisons have also been clouded by the myriad
of tertiary offerings under the general umbrella of 'communication
studies' or 'media studies' or variations of what are basically media theory
courses that include little -- if any -- vocational journalism.
The candidate, after 17 years in mainstream journalism and some
part-time teaching at the University of Queensland, joined the then
Mitchell College of Advanced Education (later to become Charles Sturt
University - Mitchell) in early 1979. Contacts made during industry liaison trips to major media employers and the AJA often involved him in long discussions trying to explain the differences between the Mitchell or CSU course, and what was being taught in journaHsm programs
elsewhere. Employers -- and to a much lesser extent the MEAA -- were
interested in what was being taught in tertiary courses (and some still are), but appeared to know little about what was covered in the various
programs, who taught them, and what could be expected from their
respective graduates. This thesis began after repeated requests by the then
National Director of News for theNine Network, Ian Cook, for a
summary of the various vocation-based journalism courses around the
country. His successor told a group of CSU journalism students and staff
late in 1996 that he was regularly contacted by parents wanting to know the
differences between the CSU and University of Technology Sydney journalism programs.
T tell them I don't know but point out that there are 36 CSU graduates working at Nine in Sydney, and no-one from UTS' (Fenn, 1996).
The candidate began collecting material on the various courses in
1993, and during the research phase four new courses have emerged ~ three in Queensland, at Griffith University's Nathan (Brisbane) and Gold
Coast campuses and at the James Cook University of North Queensland
(Townsville), and one in Victoria at Monash University's Gippsland campus. Hypothesis
It is the candidate's hypothesis that journalism educators share much in common about what they believe should be included in their courses, since most come from extensive experience in mainstream media, but that the size, structure and staffing of the various programs mean some graduates are better prepared for entry-level positions in the media than others. The candidate also contends that the differing entry requirements, assessment procedures, access to equipment and production requirements lead to a diverse group of graduates each year. The candidate also believes that there are far too many students graduating from the various journalism courses across the country for the available jobs in mainstream media. Literature review
Research by academics, the MEAA, the association of tertiary educators (JEA) and individual working journalists on the state of journalism education since the explosion in courses of the 1970's has, at best, been limited and generalised. It has comprised journal articles, union and association reports and articles by individual journalists.
No-one has gone into any depth of comparison of the vocational tertiary journalism courses available in Australia.
The earliest attempt to compare programs was done by journalist, author and academic Maurice Dunlevy in a survey for Education News in
1976. Dunlevy is the longest-serving journalism educator in Australia
(Stuart, 1996). He surveyed what were then 15 courses (some of which would not qualify as journalism courses under the criteria used for the candidate's survey), their intakes, graduation statistics, staffing and gave his ideas ~ as Senior Lecturer in Journalism at what was then Canberra
College of Advanced Education (now the University of Canberra) - on what should be included in the various courses. Dunlevy drew attention to the major problem facing journalism academics at the time ~ recognition of their courses and graduates. The training for journalists favoured then by employers and the union, the AJA, involved a three or four-year cadetship undertaken at the workplace under the nominal supervision of the employer and the union. At the time Dunlevy wrote, there were only 20-odd journalism lecturers across the country, mainly from newspapers, and mainly with arts degrees. About 1,500 students were enrolled in their programs, about 700 were being admitted each year, and about 170 were graduating annually (Dunlevy 1976, p 6). He concluded that with the contemporary attitude of distrust towards tertiary- trained journalists among mainstream media employers:
'Winning media respect for a system of education instead of a program of training is going to be rather like shooting down a jet plane with a bow and arrow while standing on a see-saw' (Dunlevy 1976, p 9).
Dunlevy's proverbial jet plane was finally shot down, but it took some years, and the combined efforts of journalism academics and their graduates. Tertiary-trained journalists are now readily accepted, in fact, actively sought, by media employers (Fenn 1996, Flynn 1996).
A Federal Vice President of the AJA, Bob Duffield, tabled a report to the union's Federal Council in the late 1970's titled The New Breeding
Ground: A report for AjA Federal Council on Journalism Courses in
Australia (Duffield 1979). Duffield, who at the time was teaching broadcast journalism at the Western Australian Institute of Technology
(now Curtin University of Technology), produced a seven-page report looking at 13 vocational courses. In a report with some rather sweeping generalisations he highlighted the problems he thought the tertiary sector was still having in the late 1970's in winning acceptance for their programs and their graduates. He concluded that journalism courses were here to stay, but added that no empirical set of standards for a journalism course applied to the existing courses and saw little point in either the AJA or the employers trying to impose one. He endorsed the existing diversity in
3 0009 03201186 3 courses and questioned whether the union should concern itself with
accrediting courses (Duffield 1979, p 5). These were prophetic words
considering the union's relative lack of interest in tertiary journalism
courses in recent times. Many journalism educators surveyed as part of
this project found this relative lack of interest hard to follow since
graduates from their programs represent the major source of the union's
new members.
Duffield recommended that the AJA open a dialogue with the
Australian Association for Tertiary Education in Journalism (AATEJ), the
forerunner of today's JEA, with a view to exchanging information, possible
affiliation, and cooperation in designing guidelines for possible AJA
accreditation of courses. He also suggested that the AJA open a dialogue
with the national communication students' association, ACOSA. Despite
the best attempts of interested groups of students across the country, their
association has been defunct for more than a decade. Duffield's final
recommendation was that the Federal Council of the AJA appoint a sub-
committee to affect his recommendations. The candidate was a member
of the AJA and a tertiary educator at the time and that was the last he
heard of that report.
The history of AJA - AATEJ (or nowadays MEAA - JEA) discussions
has been one of occasional flurries of activity ~ such as the setting up of a
National Working Party on journalism Education and Training after a
national conference of employers, union officials and academics in
Melbourne in 1987 {Forum on journalism Education, AJR, 1988 and
Patching 1989) and the joint work by Chris Lawe-Davies for the JEA and
Chris Smyth for the MEAA on accreditation in the early 1990's (Lawe-
Davies 1992, 1994). So far these occasional flurries have come to nothing. In May, 1980, the Journalism Education Association issued a booklet titled Report of vocational courses in journalism at Australian tertiary education institutions. It carried details of the courses at Canberra CAE,
Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education, Darling Downs lAE, Deakin
University, Hartley CAE, Mitchell CAE, New South Wales Institute of
Technology, Queensland Institute of Technology, Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology, University of Queensland, and the Western
Australian Institute of Technology. Each institution was given two or three foolscap single-spaced pages to explain their course under several common headings -- like structure, content, teaching facilities, graduate numbers, staff and their backgrounds (JEA, 1980). If readers had sufficient time and understanding of academic jargon, they could have undertaken their own comparison of the content and approach in those 11 courses.
The candidate had helped David Potts, JEA President of the time, and one of the first of the modern era of journalism educators in Australia, produce the booklet, and while JEA members understood its contents, it was not what its intended audience -- potential journalism students and graduate employers -- would have found an easy read.
A year later, a graduate from Mitchell College's journalism program, Lindsay Simpson, looked at whether journalism graduates were getting jobs in a page-long feature iovThe National Times, titled
'Journalism Courses: Do they deliver the jobs? (Simpson 1981). She concluded that the courses which had 'sprung up throughout Australia' were starting to convince employers that journalism graduates were worth employing. She highlighted the acceptance of graduates like herself among the major employers ~ News Limited, the then Herald and Weekly
Times group (later taken over by News Limited), John Fairfax and Consolidated Press (the Packer group). Acceptance of graduates by the major broadcast employers of the time was not mentioned. The candidate's anecdotal evidence suggests that employers in radio and television newsrooms accepted tertiary graduates more readily at the time than the major print groups.
The following year, respected journalist Sam Lipski looked at industry criticism of journalism courses, drawing attention to what he saw as a 'considerable level of ignorance and suspicion inside large sections of the Press about what is actually happening on the campuses' (Lipski 1982).
He was critical of his senior colleagues' attitudes, noting that with one or two exceptions, journalism educators in Australia had experience as reporters, sub-editors or producers:
part of the confusion and scepticism is due to a tendency by many journalists, editors and proprietors to lump the journalism courses with media studies and dismiss the lot as academic theorising by people who have never been inside a newspaper office, let alone actually ever reported a story'. (Lipski 1982).
But he also blamed the tertiary institutions and journalism academics for what he saw as the lack of acceptance of their graduates. He said Australian universities did not take the study of journalism seriously, adding that vocal academics who readily drew attention to the media's shortcomings put no serious effort into doing anything about them (Lipski
1982).
Journalism academic Lawrie Apps also drew attention to the industry's distrust of journalism courses in a paper to the JEA conference in Bathurst, in August, 1982:
'To break down the barriers of mistrust, if not downright hostility, towards tertiary journalism courses seems to be a continuing battle'. (Apps 1982, pi). The largest national survey to date into journalism education in
Australia was also undertaken in that year by Murray Masterton (and two
colleagues, American exchange journalism lecturer Jay Black and fellow
lecturer Julie Duncan) at the then Hartley College of Advanced Education
in Adelaide (now part of the University of South Australia). Their
findings were published in the book, ... but you II never be bored: the 5 W's
of Australia s journalists in 1983. Masterton and his colleagues carried out
on-site in-depth interviews with 318 Austrahan journalists in newspapers,
radio and television stations, news agencies, news magazines and
freelance offices across the country. The questions probed educational and
socio-economic backgrounds, present job levels and vocational aspirations,
job satisfaction and mobility. The national survey showed that in the early
1980's, 16.3% had entered journalism after completing a degree, 16.7% took
up journalism after completing part of a degree, and 3.7% had a second
degree. And while the interviewees were given the opportunity to suggest
what they thought ought to be in journalism courses, the survey did not
attempt to compare the structure or output of the existing courses
(Masterton 1982). it did show, however, that of the 20-25 year-old age
group of the day, 85% had been exposed to University or College of
Advanced Education courses, usually journalism, humanities or social
sciences. Nearly half in that age group were currently studying at a local
university. Technical and Further Education (TAFE) college or CAE and
Masterton suggested the number would have been higher if there were institutions offering journalism courses within easy reach of more practicing journalists (Masterton 1982). It also showed that journaUsm academics and their graduates still had some way to go before either were widely accepted by senior journalists and media executives. A couple of comments will give an insight into employer attitudes:
'Some of your kids know a bloody sight more about what's wrong with a newspaper than how to put it right, or even how to do it right' (Brisbane executive).
'How can we have confidence in journalism schools when they are run by people who don't know anything about journalism' (Sydney Chief of Staff). (Masterton 1982).
A former student of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, writing
iovAsian Messenger the following year under the heading 'Australian
Journalism Education', said there were then 11 institutions offering
journalism courses without naming them. The only two mentioned in
any detail were the University of Queensland and Mitchell College of
Advanced Education. While she addressed aspects of courses like theory
verses practical content, student publications, curriculum and the need for
Australian texts, the only people quoted at any length were the University
of Queensland's Charles Stokes and the candidate (Keck 1982). It was at best a very superficial look at the tertiary journalism education scene in
Australia in the early 1980's.
Five years later, freelance journalist Liz Fell undertook a major survey of tertiary journalism programs for the Committee to review
Australian studies in tertiary education (Fell 1987). She looked at the early history of journalism education across the country, including the debate between tertiary education and the in-house cadetship training scheme, and the conflict between communication studies and journalism. While she referred to various course structures, and detailed courses which included some degree of Australian studies in their curriculum (the brief for her report), she did not compare them for content, staffing, student numbers or size of the various journalism programs. She concluded: There is obviously no way this report can evaluate journalism
education in a con^prehensive or systematic way/ (Fell 1987).
The latest attempt at comparison is contained in CSU journalism academic Kitty Eggerking's Training Australian Journalists - Information
Paper for the Department of Employment, Education and Training (1993).
Aimed at advocating an Aboriginal Studies component in journalism courses, the report notes that by the end of 1992, 17 institutions offered a major or degree course in journalism, and all but one (RMIT) included aboriginal studies in some form. One of the courses mentioned in the
Eggerking study (the Lismore campus of the New England University, which later broke away from their forced amalgamation with UNE to form
Southern Cross University) does not qualify for the candidate's survey. Methodology
All the courses compared in the candidate's study are classified as vocational (or in the current jargon 'market-drivenO teaching the 'how to' of journalism and preparing their graduates in varying degrees for employment in journalism-related fields of the media. It does not include media studies courses, communication studies programs, or the variations on that theme ~ the so-called 'normative' or academic courses that are more concerned with teaching the way journalism 'ought to be' than how to do it.
Nor does it include private journalism colleges ~ like the
Australian College of Journalism, or Macleay College ~ or the undergraduate Diploma course in broadcasting and journalism at Batchelor College, south of Darwin. It includes only vocational courses at Australian universities where journalism is taught as part of an undergraduate degree or postgraduate degree or diploma program. For comparative purposes, apart from the two stand alone postgraduate courses, the candidate has used the undergraduate course because in all but one case -- UTS -- it is the course with the largest enrolment in the journalism area. After a thorough literature search under the general heading of journalism education, and in some of the specific areas proposed for comparison, the candidate designed a four-part 61-question survey (Appendix 1) to administer to Course Coordinators or senior academics at all 22 vocational journalism courses. The questionnaire covered a brief history of each course; course structure; admissions criteria and admissions and graduation statistics; and teaching staff. The interview process involved both qualitative and quantitative information gathering. The survey took from two hours (for the courses begun in the past 18 months) to nearly four hours (for the well-established and larger courses) to administer. In part one, interviewees were asked when the course began and what form it took, who was involved in its early days, how the course had developed, how many people taught in the original course, whether it was designed along the lines of the American journalism model, whether there was a distance education component to the course, and what major changes had there been recently or were planned for the near future. Since whether to teach shorthand or not as part of the course has been a constant issue for journalism academics since the earliest days of degree programs, interviewees were also asked about the place of shorthand in their course. Part two on course structure looked at where the journalism course
was located within the university's academic structure, the split between
theory and practical subjects within the current program, other
compulsory subjects, electives, work experience, industry support, the
publications and equipment (both print and broadcast) in each course and
how each program was reacting to the challenges of the new technologies.
This section also asked each interviewee their opinions on accreditation
for courses and the role of the MEAA in their course.
Part three looked at how the various Course Coordinators decide
who will be admitted to their courses, their intake quotas, drop-out rates,
female/male percentages, where graduates have been employed in recent
years, where the Coordinators think jobs are likely to be in a future of
converging technologies, and their opinions on the numbers studying
journalism around the country.
The final section looked at the teaching staff, their backgrounds
(both industry and academic), their publications, consultancies, and
workloads.
The candidate visited all 22 campuses on which the programs are
taught and interviewed the Journalism Coordinator or a senior journalism academic. Not everyone understood the project. One Head of
Department was convinced by a staff member not involved in the interview process that the candidate was a 'spy' who planned to publish ratings of journalism courses (Stuart 1996) On two other occasions -- fortunately only involving trips to nearby Canberra and Sydney ~ the candidate arrived at the appointed time and place to find no Course
Coordinator to interview, necessitating a return visit. As soon as possible after the interview, the answers were entered onto the original of that institution's questionnaire, and the completed questionnaire, plus a diagrammatic representation of the course structure, was sent back to the interviewee for comment and correction. In one case (Central Queensland University), the Journalism Coordinator was interstate at the time of the visit, but a colleague was interviewed and the Course Coordinator reviewed the completed questionnaire and suggested alterations. On two other occasions (at Curtin and Murdoch Universities in Perth), a colleague sat in on the interview with the coordinator, offering assistance with answers, but the questionnaires on both occasions were reviewed by the respective Journalism Coordinator. The courses surveyed were: Bond University, University of Canberra, Central Queensland University, Charles Sturt University - Mitchell, Curtin University of Technology, Deakin University, Edith Cowan University, Griffith University - Nathan, Griffith University - Gold Coast, James Cook University of North Queensland, Monash University, Murdoch University, Newcastle University, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of South Australia, University of Southern Queensland, Swinburne University of Technology, University of Technology Sydney, University of Western Sydney and Wollongong University. The candidate concluded that the courses should be categorised into four distinct groups, three undergraduate and one postgraduate. The first group is where the journalism component is the major part of the degree -- characterised by the University of Queensland program where students can take up to 14 of the 24 subjects in the undergraduate degree in journalism-related areas. The candidate made the cut-off for this group as those with at least 10 journalism subjects in the degree. The second group are those where there is a journalism major in the undergraduate degree of at least six subjects, but no more than nine, and the final group of
undergraduate courses are those where there are less that six journalism
subjects in the program. The two stand alone postgraduate programs ~
Wollongong and Murdoch -- form a group of their own. While most of
the undergraduate programs have developed (or are in the process of
developing) Honours years and various levels of postgraduate
qualifications, from Graduate Diplomas to Masters degrees and in some
cases PhD programs, Wollongong and Murdoch are unique in that there
are no undergraduate journalism programs at either institution.
Discussion of what constitutes a journalism program is undertaken in
Chapter 3.
The 22 interviews spanned 16 months (June 1995 to September 1996)
because of the candidate's limited opportunities to travel to the various
campuses around the country, and often the equally-limited availability of
the various Coordinators. The candidate was forced by CSU
Administration to take three months' long service leave late in 1995, and had hoped to complete the interview stage of the project in that time.
However, he was called back to work halfway through his leave to act as
Head of School (Communication) while the HOS recovered from a double bypass heart operation. This meant completion of the final four interviews (Wollongong, UTS, Griffith - Gold Coast and Monash) was delayed into 1996. The last interview ~ with John Tebbutt from Monash
University - was completed in Melbourne on September 30, 1996.
Despite several reminders, and in several cases having a second copy of the completed questionnaire sent to them for review, three of the interviewees did not return their review copies with suggested corrections or alterations. Completed questionnaires were not returned from the
University of Queensland, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Technology, Sydney. The candidate has assumed that these
Coordinators were satisfied with the contents of the completed
questionnaires since in the first two cases, they have had copies of the
completed questionnaires for review for more than a year.
Since none of the present coordinators from the courses begun in
the 1970's were employed at their respective institutions in the
developmental stages of their courses, they often had little knowledge
about the early days. Here the candidate has drawn extensively on
appropriate institutional handbooks of the era and the PhD thesis by journalism academic Charles Stuart on the history of journalism education in Australia (Stuart 1996) to sketch in the necessary detail. Most had little to offer, either, when questioned about early developments once the program had been established, and whether they thought the program had been designed along the traditional American journalism model.
While most could recall the names of the early staff involved in their program, the candidate decided not to pursue these areas as they were of only marginal interest in the overall context of the survey. Definitions
For the purposes of this survey, and to enable comparisons to be made between courses, certain definitions need to be explained.
As mentioned earlier, a journalism course has been defined as a vocation-based course teaching the 'how to' of journalism with the purpose of preparing its graduates (as opposed to those who may take a few journalism subjects in a larger program from interest or as electives in another degree offered by the institution) to work in the media. The candidate decided to use both 'course' and 'progranì' to denote a program of study leading to an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification.
To prevent confusion, a 'subject' in this survey denotes a semester- long (but sometimes year-long) sequence of study in a discipline area, often called a 'unit' or 'course' at some institutions. In most of the courses, 24 individual subjects, usually taken at the rate of four per semester for six semesters of full-time study, constitutes an undergraduate degree. There are variations, and, of course, the two postgraduate programs are quite different, but these variations are discussed in Chapter 3. The candidate decided to use the more common term 'semester' to denote a period of study (usually 13 weeks or more) - most institutions dividing their academic year into two semesters — even though his own institution refers to the period as a 'session'. Chapter 2
Three decades of journalism education in Australia
The first section of the questionnaire sought to estabhsh when each
of the 22 degree (or postgraduate) journalism courses began, in what form,
and who was involved in the early developments. The candidate was
also interested in briefly canvassing how the courses had developed over
the past 25 years and what major developments had recently taken place,
or were planned in the near future. Questions were also asked about two
areas that have seen major changes over the period under consideration ~
the place of shorthand within the various degrees and the extent of
distance education as a method of course delivery.
For the purposes of the survey, it was decided to narrow the history
of the courses to the modern era of journalism education in Australia ~
from 1969 to the present. The candidate chose 1969 because it saw the
beginning of the Gordon Institute (later Deakin University) course, the
first of the modern era. The early history of Australia's tertiary journalism
courses (from 1919 to 1987) is the subject of a PhD thesis by Senior Lecturer
in Journalism at the University of Southern Queensland, Charles Stuart
(Stuart, 1996). And while it is of passing academic interest who first taught journalism in Australia ~ the University of Queensland, Melbourne
University or the University of Western Australia (as noted in Chapter 1, it was the University of Western Australia) ~ the candidate was more interested in the development of the 'modern' courses. The University of Queensland has the longest history of offering a journalism program on
a continuous basis, dating its diploma back to 1921 (Grundy 1995).
The Gordon Institute in Geelong was the first of the modern era of tertiary institutions to offer a journalism course. It offered a Diploma of
General Studies (Vocational Writing) from 1969, upgrading it to a degree in 1974. Deakin University began teaching the journahsm degree in 1977
(Stuart 1996). The Canberra College of Advanced Education began teaching journalism subjects in the BA (Professional Writing) under the title The
Craft of Writing' in 1970 (Canberra CAE Handbook, 1970).
The next institution to offer a degree course in journalism was the
University of Queensland in 1971 (Grundy 1995). In that year, the Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology offered a four-year part-time Diploma
course, extended it to the external or distance education mode from 1974,
and offered journalism as a degree from 1978 (Stuart 1996).
Mitchell College of Advanced Education (now Charles Sturt
University - Mitchell) at Bathurst in the central west of New South Wales also began in 1971, offering journalism in a Diploma of Arts, and as a degree course from 1976 (Mitchell CAE Prospectus 1971, MCAE Calender
1976). Hartley College of Advanced Education in Adelaide (now part of the
University of South Australia) was the only journalism diploma to take its first students in 1973, becoming a degree course in 1979 (Richards 1995).
While the current Course Coordinator at the University of South
Australia, Ian Richards, believes the course began in 1973, Charles Stuart's research dates the course's beginning to 1974 (Stuart 1996). Nineteen-seventy-four saw three other courses begin ~ at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, now Curtin (Apps 1995), the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in Toowoomba (now the University of Southern Queensland) and at the Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education in Rockhampton (now the Central Queensland University). The Darling Downs course began as a Associate Diploma in Journalism, with the first graduates receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 (Stuart 1995: 1). Journalism at Capricornia began as a part-time Diploma of Applied Arts, became full-time a year later, and was upgraded to a BA in 1976 (Sedorkin, 1995). The News South Wales Institute of Technology (now the University of Technology, Sydney) began teaching journalism in a BA (Communication) in 1975. While the then Course Coordinator of the journalism course at the Queensland University of Technology, Len Granato, believes journalism began at the University's predecessor, the Queensland Institute of Technology in 1974 (Granato 1995), Stuart points out advertising and public relations began in that year. When it was proposed to introduce a journalism course in 1976, the move was rejected by the Queensland Board of Advanced Education. According to Stuart, the journalism course began in 1977 (Stuart 1996). There was a lull until the early-1980's when a modest course began at the Western Australian CAE (now Edith Cowan University) in Perth. A three-subject minor in journalism was first taught there as part of a Media Studies major in 1982 (White 1995). Three years later, journalism began at the Newcastle College of Advanced Education, now part of the University of Newcastle (Sheridan Burns 1995). The University of Western Sydney at Nepean began its journaism courses in 1986 (Stuart 1996). There was renewed interest in offering journalism at tertiary institutions in the wake of the Federal Government's scrapping of the
Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE) tertiary education sector in the late
1980's and the forced amalgamations with other colleges and universities to form the nation's current 37 publicly-funded universities. It started with the inclusion of two journalism subjects in a six-subject media studies major at the Swinburne Institute of Technology (now Swinburne
University of Technology) in suburban Melbourne in 1989.
Nineteen-ninety saw the introduction of the first of the two stand alone postgraduate courses at Wollongong University. While many of the existing courses were considering or developing postgraduate journalism programs, Wollongong was the first to establish a stand-alone
Graduate School in Journalism in Australia, without an undergraduate program. Wollongong offered a Master of Arts in journalism from the
Spring Session (beginning in July) of 1990 and Bond University began its undergraduate and postgraduate journalism programs in the same year.
Because Bond operates a three-semester teaching year, they began teaching their new courses in January, thereby being the first to begin teaching a
Masters program in journalism (Pearson, 1995, Lloyd 1996). The second of the stand alone postgraduate courses ~ a six-subject graduate diploma in journalism — was offered for the first time by Western
Australia's Murdoch University in 1991.
Four years elapsed before a flurry of academic activity saw four new journalism courses get off the ground in 1994-95. Three new courses began in 1995, two in Queensland, at Griffith University's Brisbane campus at
Nathan and at the James Cook University of North Queensland in
Townsville, and the other at Monash University's Gippsland campus at Churchill. The most recent journalism course in Australia began at
Griffith University's Gold Coast campus in the south-east corner of
Queensland early in 1996. The latest program differs from the others in that it is designated as a course in Television Journalism (Stockwell 1996).
In summary, half Australia's university journalism courses began basically with the arrival of the CAE sector in the late 1960's - early 1970's, another four started through the 1980's, and nearly a third (7) have begun in the 1990's, including four in 1995-96. Locations
The courses are spread very unevenly around the country.
Tasmania and the Northern Territory don't have a journalism course (at degree level or above), although there was a short-lived course at the
University of the Northern Territory in the late 1980's (Simms, 1995).
South Australia (University of South Australia) and the Australian
Capital Territory (Canberra) have one each. Western Australia has three courses clustered in Perth (Curtin, Edith Cowan and Murdoch) and
Victoria — one of the most populous states of Australia ~ has four (Deakin,
Monash, RMIT and Swinburne). The country's most populous state. New
South Wales, has five tertiary journalism programs, but only two (UTS and UWS) are located in the Sydney metropolitan area. The other three are within easy reach of the metropolitan area, though ~ at Newcastle to the north, Wollongong to the south, and over the Blue Mountains to the west at Bathurst, about 200 kilometres from the Sydney GPO (CSU -
Mitchell).
The largest concentration of copurses is in the south-east corner of
Queensland, where there are six courses either in Brisbane (Qld, QUT and
Griffith (Nathan) or within no more than 90 minutes' drive of the State capital. There are two courses on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, (Bond and Griffith - Gold Coast) and another in Toowoomba, on the Darling
Downs west of Brisbane (USQ). Two other programs in Queensland are at
Rockhampton (CQU) and Townsville (James Cook), bring to eight the
number of courses in the so-called Sunshine state.
In summary, Queensland, Australia's third most populous state, has
more than a third (36%) of the vocational journalism programs in the
country. NSW has nearly a quarter (about 22%) of the courses, Victoria
18%, Western Australia 13% and South Australia and the ACT with one
course apiece each represent about 4.5% of the nation's tertiary journalism
programs. In later discussion of the intake and graduation figures in
Chapter 4, comparisons are made of the number of graduates from the
courses in each state.
As noted in Chapter 1, while the survey began with questions about
the original format of the course, its staffing and early industry
involvement, it quickly became apparent that the current group of Course
Coordinators had little more than anecdotal knowledge or local
institutional 'folklore' to draw upon when discussing the early days. As
also noted, Stuart goes into considerable detail about the establishment of
the courses between 1969 and 1987 (the time of the CAE and University
amalgamation discussions). The candidate sees little point in duplicating
Stuarf s work. Theory / practical split
There's a long-standing debate, not only among journalism
academics and their peers and administrations but also among working journalists and their employers about the best split between theoretical
and practical subjects in the various programs. The JEA Conference in
Geelong in 1996 devoted a session of papers to the on-going debate. So how did the early courses ~ the 11 developed in the 1970's — handle the thorny question of theory versus practical? The structure of the 11 courses started since 1982 has not changed substantially, as far as comparison with the current structure in concerned, and will be discussed in the following chapter on current course structures. As was the case throughout much of the qualitative phases of the research, opinions differed widely among the various Course Coordinators and senior journalism teaching staff on what constituted theory and practice. More particularly, with most practical subjects involving lectures and practical tutorials, did the lectures constitute theory or discussion of practice?
For the purposes of the candidate's survey it was decided to label subjects with obvious practical nomenclature like Media Writing, Writing for the Media, Journalism Practice, Journalism 1 (and other numbers), as practical subjects, and those that involved communication theory such as media ownership and control, media law, ethics, communication research and the other variations on that theme as theory subjects. Still it was necessary on many occasions to consult early handbooks at the institutions to characterise the subjects.
In the early versions of the Curtin University of Technology course, the journalism major involved eight semester-long subjects. The degree comprised 22 subjects. Subjects in first and second years (where four were taken each session) were worth 25 points each and in the third and final year of the course, three subjects were taken each session, and were worth
35 points each (Curtin handbook, 1995). Journalism Coordinator, Lawrie
Apps says the course always aimed at a 60/40 split between practical and theory content (Apps 1995). So Curtin had the highest practical component in their degree (60%), or conversely the lowest theory component at 40%. Somewhere between 60/40 practical / theory and 50/50 was the course at the Queensland University (then Institute) of Technology.
While the journalism major comprised six subjects in journalism (with two thirds practical in nature), journalism students were also offered two electives in journalism ~ both theoretical. So the practical / theoretical percentage depended on the individual students' choices up to a maximum of 50% theoretical (JEA, 1980).
Nearly half of the 1970's courses - CSU, Deakin, USA, USQ, and
Canberra -- had a 50/50 split between practical and theory subjects. The early versions of the CSU program (then Mitchell CAE) had varying numbers of subjects in the journalism major as it developed towards degree status in 1976, but had equal numbers of theory and practice subjects
(MCAE Prospectus 1971 and MCAE Calendar 1974). Deakin University's journalism teaching staff had been under continuous pressure from senior university academic administrators to increase the theoretical component to 60%, but resisted the pressure and kept the practical / theory split at
50/50 to the present day (Hurst 1995).
In the early days of the University of South Australia course (then
Hartley CAE) in the Adelaide suburb of Magill, staff maintained a 50/50 theory / practical split and also required students to attain a shorthand speed of 120 words a minute by the end of the second year of the course
(Richards 1995). Stuart says that the USQ course (formerly the Darling
Downs Institute of Advanced Education) has always aimed at having a course with a 50% practical component within the journalism subjects
(Stuart, 1995:1).
Canberra had always combined theory and practice in their subjects
- theory in the mass lectures, and practical work in tutorials, as opposed to having specific theory subjects, as was and is still the case in other courses.
But Course Coordinator Wendy Bilboe says the aim was always to have a
50/50 split between theory and practice (Bilboe, 1995). According to early
RMIT handbooks quoted in Stuarf s PhD thesis, the earliest versions of that course comprised nine year-long subjects, with about 45% covering journalism skills, shorthand and typing (Stuart, 1996), giving the course a
55% theory component.
The journalism component of the earliest version of the Central
Queensland University (then Capricornia lAE) course comprised four media studies (theory) subjects and two journalism subjects (quaintly named Journalism 11 and 111, since there was no Journalism 1), so the theory / practical split at that time was 66/33.Probably predictably, because of its long history of offering journalism at an established university, the highest theory component at any of the early journalism courses was at the University of Queensland. The course has only ever offered a relatively small number of practical subjects in journalism. In the eight- subject journalism major, seven were compulsory, and one elective. Two of the compulsory subjects were practical, and students could take a practical elective. If the student took a theory elective, then six of the eight subjects in the major would have been theoretical — a 75% theoretical component ~ and if they took a practical elective, the major
would have been about 63% theoretical. Anecdotal evidence suggests the majority of students opted for a practical elective, but students at the longest continuing University-based course could have taken a major that was 75% theoretical or conversely, 25% practical (Grundy 1995). Shorthand
Another of the long-standing debates in journalism education circles in Australia has been whether shorthand should be taught as part of the course, or simply encouraged among those who wanted to pursue a career in mainstream media, particularly those seeking employment with mainstream newspapers.
When the candidate joined the journalism teaching staff of Mitchell
CAE in 1979, shorthand was one of the most controversial inclusions in the course. The Head of Department's secretary taught it an hour a day outside her normal working hours. It was a compulsory subject to be taken in the fourth semester of the six semester degree ~ ie in the second half of the second year of the three-year full-time degree. It was the most failed subject in the degree. Students were required to reach a certified speed of 60 words per minute (the level then expected of newspaper cadets at the end of the first year of their cadetship). Few Mitchell students were able to reach 60 wpm at the first attempt. Many had to re-enrol in the shorthand subject in their fifth semester, some in their sixth. Many took the examination three or more times before passing. The candidate remembers some students, who found shorthand particularly difficult to master, returning to campus in the February after completing the course in
a last ditch effort to pass shorthand and graduate in the following April or
May. Shorthand was dropped as a compulsory core subject in the journaHsm major after industry advice during a course review in the mid
1980's. Only the Fairfax group and AJA representatives wanted shorthand retained in the degree. Others on the industry panel, notably from the broadcast journalism area (the Australian Broadcasting Commission,
Radio 2UE and Channel 9) and News Limited saw other subjects ~ like Australian politics and history ~ as more appropriate for a tertiary
journalism program than the nominal mastering of shorthand.
With the major print employers (and the MEAA) still keen on
mainstream media employees being proficient in shorthand, the candidate
asked the respective interviewees the history of shorthand in their course.
While the longer-established programs had shorthand in their earlier
courses, only a small number still have it as a compulsory part of their
degree. Journalism staff with long associations with the industry
commented that they had tried to keep shorthand in their courses in some
form, but had been overridden by university administrators who saw it as
a skills subject -- like typing and computer literacy -- that should be
mastered in the students' own time, rather than being taught as part of a
university degree.
The University of South Australia has the longest history of having
shorthand as a compulsory part of their degree. Currently T-line shorthand is taught in two subjects in the first year of the course, but that requirement may change at a forthcoming review of the course (Richards,
1995). University of South Australia students can also take advanced shorthand as an elective in the third year of the course. At the University of Southern Queensland, shorthand is included as a subject titled
Independent Study' and students are required to attain a speed of 40 words per minute in their own time and at their own expense before graduating
(Stuart, 1995: 1). Australia's only private university journalism course.
Bond, has shorthand as part of a practical subject, with an essay alternative for anyone who elects not to do it. For those who take it, their final speed is shown on their academic transcript (Pearson 1995). At RMIT, 1995 was the first year that journahsm staff did not organise shorthand classes for students. Because of the very strong connection with the major newspaper employers in the early stages of the
RMIT course, it was compulsory, but no academic credit was given for it
While not a formal part of the course in recent times, it was strongly encouraged (as it is in many courses), and arrangements were made to bring a professional on campus to teach it (Ricketson 1995).
After strong encouragement from industry guest lecturers in recent times, the journalism staff at the University of Technology, Sydney, organised to have shorthand taught through their research centre, the
Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, in the second half of 1996 for an appropriate fee. Previously they had arranged for UTS students to do shorthand with The Sydney Morning Herald's shorthand teacher
(Bacon 1996).
Murdoch University in Perth, with its one-year Graduate Diploma in Journalism, has overcome the problem with an agreement with West
Australian Newspapers that it is not mandatory for Murdoch graduates to have attained a certain level of shorthand to qualify for interview for final-year cadetships, but they must begin intensive classes immediately they get a job with the group (Simms 1995). Cur tin has a similar arrangement with that employer (Apps 1995). Most other course coordinators and senior journalism teaching staff encourage their print majors to take shorthand, perhaps at a local TAPE college, in their own time, and at their own expense, during their degree.
At Central Queensland, shorthand was a non-compulsory part of the course until 1995. The University arranged for a local TAPE teacher to come to their Rockhampton campus on Friday afternoons to take shorthand classes. But there had always been controversy at CQU and its predecessor, Capricornia, about its inclusion, and it was finally dropped in
1995. CSU print journalism majors are advised that most of the major print employers (like Fairfax and News Ltd) require students to attain a speed of 90 wpm before qualifying for a final-year cadetship (Patching
1996).
At Deakin University, staff of the journalism school would like to make it part of the degree, but have been prevented by the University administration (Hurst 1995).
James Cook University plans to offer courses on campus with the
Journalism Students' Association and the local TAFE (Mcllwaine 1995). At
Newcastle, the University Administration does not allow shorthand as part of the course but subject outlines give three teaching sites, and staff actively encourage it for those who want a future in mainstream media
(Sheridan Burns 1995).
The University of Queensland originally had shorthand as half of a practical subject, but when the Course Coordinator Bruce Grundy tried to have it expanded to a full subject, he was 'rolled' within the faculty.
Arrangements are made for voluntary classes and students encouraged to take it (Grundy 1995).
Queensland University of Technology also dropped shorthand under pressure from administration. Progress through the print journalism components of the course had been dependent on students attaining first 40 words per minute, then 60. Professional teachers were hired to teach it, but there was no academic credit for the mastering of shorthand.
When Michael Rose was the JournaHsm Coordinator at the
University of Western Sydney (Nepean), he constantly argued with administration for the inclusion of shorthand as part of the course, but it was never approved (Rose 1995). UWS students were encouraged to take shorthand at a nearby TAPE. The SMH offered to allow UWS students to take shorthand with their cadets, but the arrangement never worked, probably because of the distance between the Nepean campus and Fairfax's central Sydney location (Rose 1995). T-line shorthand has been offered on a voluntary basis in conjunction with the Wollongong course, but it has never been a success (Lloyd 1996).
Shorthand has never really been an option for the smaller courses -- like Edith Cowan and Swinburne ~ and the two new Griffith University courses see no role for it at present (White 1995, Vigo 1995, Meadows 1995 and Stockwell 1996). While it is not part of the new Monash course at present. Course Coordinator John Tebbutt says it may eventually be introduced in some form (Tebbutt, 1996).
At those courses with a history of offering shorthand on a voluntary basis, the story was the same. Attendances in the early part of the semester were good, but as the semester progressed, and other assignment commitments took precedence, numbers dropped. By semester's end, only the keenest students remained. Journalism by distance education
Only three courses offer undergraduate journalism courses by distance education -- Deakin, Monash and USQ. Wollongong offers a
Masters course in Australia and overseas through Wollongong On Line and the University of Queensland is offering postgraduate journalism courses on the Internet, Of the three, Deakin is by far the biggest provider of distance journalism programs in Australia. A total of 232 students started the Deakin distance education journalism course in 1995. But as is the case with many distance courses, it has a large drop-out rate. By the second half of 1995 the number had dwindled to less than half (Hurst 1995) The University of Southern Queensland has offered a journalism major by distance education since 1988. However, if students want to do the Radio Journalism subject they have to attend a residential school in Toowoomba, and the Television Journalism subject is not offered in the distance education mode (Stuart, 1995). One of the newest courses ~ Monash ~ is offering its course by distance education. Last year, in its first intake, it took 10 students into the external mode, compared with 40 into the internal course (Tebbutt, 1996). Central Queensland University offers one journalism subject ~ Principles of Journalism -- externally, and the first year of the journalism program can be taken at CQU's satellite campuses at Bundaberg, Gladstone and Mackay. But satellite campus students must go to the main campus in Rockhampton to complete the senior years of the course (Sedorkin 1996). Wollongong On Line allows students to do a full Masters or Graduate Diploma in journalism by distance education. PhD and Masters by research can be done part-time, but would not be classified as distance education courses in this context (Lloyd 1996). RMIT had offered a Diploma in Arts (Journalism) by distance in the 1970's and 1980's, but has now dropped it (Ricketson, 1995). Some of the courses have some small provision for part-time students, and some are considering what they term 'more flexible delivery modes' which would involve less face-to-face teaching by journalism staff.
Major developments
The final question in the first section of the survey asked the various interviewees what they saw as the major changes recently implemented or planned for the near future. Because of the deliberately open-ended nature of the question, the answers varied, from plans to change the current structure of the overall degree to plans to introduce new courses. A common theme, however, was the need to incorporate within existing degrees more emphasis on the new technologies, the convergence of technologies, and incorporating the Internet and World
Wide Web as the latest developments in newsgathering technology.
Bond University planned a new Bachelor of Communication
(Pearson, 1995), while Canberra worked on a new strategy initiated by their senior administration, aimed at strengthening the professional strand of their degree (Bilboe, 1995). Central Queensland had made major changes in the past few years adding an Honours year and reducing the number of subjects in the journalism major from eight to six (Sedorkin, 1995).
The Charles Sturt communication degrees (there were five separate communication degrees from 1997, including journalism) face major proposals to change the common first year of the degrees to incorporate more of the new technologies, like basic desktop publishing and digital audio and video production techniques (Patching, 1996).
At Curtin the major change envisaged would bring journalism and mass communication closer together with the introduction of a Bachelor of Mass Communication expected to be attractive to overseas (especially
Asian) students (Apps, 1995). Deakin University plans to make their
course more career-orientated with a higher percentage of practical
exercises incorporated across the course, and the introduction of more
discussion of ethics (Hurst, 1995). Doug White at Edith Cowan said that
with the general contraction in the liberal arts, there was unlikely to be
much expansion in his course's current three journalism subjects, but he
hoped to split the advanced journalism subject into two separate subjects
on desktop publishing and investigative journalism (White, 1995). James
Cook only began teaching journalism in 1995, and changes to subject
content are still in the future (Mcllwaine, 1995).
Griffith (Nathan) hoped to introduce an Honours year in 1997, and a
Master of Comparative Journalism is planned (Meadows, 1995), while the
course at their sister campus on the Gold Coast is still 'fleshing ouf
subjects yet to be taught for the first time (Stockwell, 1996). Monash, too, is
still in the early stages of offering their course, but already the University's
central administration in Melbourne is saying it wants the journalism
components of the course to be upper-level subjects, not at introductory level (Tebbutt, 1996). The consensus among the journalism staff at
Murdoch is that they need to move more into 'on line' journalism by, for example, having students research more stories on the Internet (Simms,
1995).
At the time of the interview, the Newcastle course was awaiting approval of a new structure which would see nearly half the revised degree in core subjects (110 credit points of the 240-point degree taken in 24
10-point subjects) and up to a quarter of the subjects as electives (Sheridan
Burns, 1995). The re-structure was subsequently approved (Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Bachelor of Arts Communication Studies Student Guide
1996). As mentioned earlier, the University of Queensland was planning
the introduction of postgraduate courses on the World Wide Web
(Grundy, 1995). The Internet was also the focus of plans at the Queensland
University of Technology. Following attendance at a Computer Assisted
Reporting course in the United States in 1995 former Course Coordinator
Len Granato made computer assisted reporting (known as CAR) an
important part of the QUT journalism course. He considered it the
cutting edge of newsgathering technology (Granato, 1995).
RMIT also looked to expand the role of the Internet in their courses,
using it as a newsgathering tool and in generating ideas for research. They
also plan to put emphasis on the ethical issues surrounding the use of
material from the Internet (Ricketson, 1995).
The major development in the University of South Australia
course had been a restructure which sees no journalism taught in the first
year. The journalism group only meet together in first year for shorthand
classes. All journalism subjects shift to the second and third years of the
course. Previously, introductory journalism subjects had been taught in
the first year (Richards, 1995).
A change is proposed at USQ where students would take 10 practical journalism subjects in their degree, an increase from the current seven.
USQ also proposes to offer a Graduate Diploma in Journalism, but has not decided on a starting date (Stuart 1995).
Swinburne had no major changes to their two-unit journalism strand in mind at the time of the survey interview, but the University of
Western Sydney (Nepean), was considering expanding the existing three journalism offerings to five and adding another elective to be called
Media Law and Regulation (Rose 1995).
UTS were also investigating the changes to journalism practice --
and by implication necessary course changes ~ brought about by
digitalisation, the convergence of technology and the Internet. It decided
to include researching databases and Internet work as part of core journalism subjects (Bacon, 1996). The Wollongong course began a major
revision in 1996 designed to introduce a shorter Master of Journalism
degree suitable for both campus and distance education delivery (Lloyd,
1996).
In summary, the main points to emerge from the first section of the survey were:
• Half the current 22 vocational journalism courses began in the late
1960's and early 1970's, and a third have started in the 1990's.
• The courses are not evenly located either geographically or by density of
population across the country. South-east Queensland has more than a
quarter of the nation's journalism courses.
• The split between theory and practical subjects in the 1970's versions of
the current courses ranged from about 40% theoretical at Curtin
University to up to 75% theoretical at the University of Queensland.
Most courses had a 50/50 split between theory and practical subjects.
• Although journalism academics realise the importance of mastering
shorthand for those interested in a job in mainstream print media, only
three courses ~ at the University of South Australia, the University of
Southern Queensland and Bond ~ have it as a formal part of the course structure. Most other courses actively encourage students to take it in
their own time and often arrange for TAPE teachers to be available to
teach it.
• Undergraduate journalism is taught externally by only three
institutions ~ Deakin, Monash and USQ. Tv^o institutions teach
postgraduate journalism by distance -- the University of Queensland
and Wollongong.
• When it came to discussion of 'major developments planned for the
course', responses were wide-ranging. A common thread, though, was
the proposed incorporation into existing degrees of more emphasis on
the new technologies, the convergence of technologies and the
incorporation of the Internet as a newsgathering tool. Chapter 3
Comparing the courses
The second part of the survey compares the current courses over a
range of criteria, from Faculty and Departmental location and name of degree,
to the content of the respective programs. It looks at the split between
practical and theoretical journalism subjects, other compulsory subjects in
each degree, equipment, the opportunities for print and broadcast production
offered by each course, and the range of electives. It also compares work
experience, industry and union support for the each courses, how each course
is coping with the new technologies, and the Course Coordinators' (and
senior staffs) views on accreditation for programs (See Appendix 1 for specific questions).
But before the candidate compares the various programs it is necessary to background what constitutes a journalism course and what should be in it.
It seems nearly everyone has their own ideas, particularly on course content.
Debate has been going on in the United States for many years, but more particularly in the past decade (Della-Giustina 1985; Lewis 1993; Freedom
Forum 1994; Case 1994: Jurgenson & Meyer 1995 and Allen 1996). There has been a healthy debate in Australia, too. (The early Australian debate was mentioned as part of the literature search in Chapter 1).
A Sydney-based National Working Party on Journalism Education and
Training was formed in 1987 to look at issues of mutual interest after a conference of industry representatives, the AJA and the JEA in Melbourne. It represented the three main interest groups -- employers, the union and journalism academics. The brief from the Melbourne conference was to decide what constituted the work of a journalist, what skills and attributes he/she needed and what could be a set of minimum standards for Australian
journalism courses (Patching 1989). The candidate as JEA President was the
chair (and minutes secretary) for the working party's meetings. After 18
months' discussion, the group had failed to reach a consensus on what
constituted a journalist, let alone what skills and attributes they needed. The
working party finally expired in 1990 when the employers and the AJA set up
their own on-the-job post-cadetship training ~ the Journalism Education and
Training (JET) scheme (Lawe-Davies 1994). JET officers saw no need to
include journalism academics in their deliberations or production of training
materials.
The then JEA President, the University of Queensland's Chris Lawe-
Davies and Western Australian MEAA branch secretary Chris Smyth tried to get the two groups together a couple of years later to discuss amalgamation.
While there has been an agreement between the MEAA, the ABC and UQ over work experience in the ABC's Brisbane office (Lawe-Davies 1994), and attempts by UQ staff to have the JEA approve a set of 'exit competencies' for journalism graduates (University of Queensland Department of Journalism paper 1992) as a first step towards accreditation principles, nothing of substance has been achieved between the union and journalism academics.
The University of Queensland's Professor John Henningham fuelled the recent local debate over the size, staffing and content of a model journalism program with a controversial article in Australian Journalism Review in 1994. He suggested that the core curriculum for a journalism program should have 10 journalism subjects, including four practical subjects. Every would-be journalism student needed a thorough grounding in newspaper journalism 'before they move into broadcast journalism' (Henningham 1994).
The candidate rejected the suggestion that journalism students needed to master print journalism before learning broadcast journalism. The CSU communication program, as evaluated by a Henningham survey
(Henningham 1993) has been running separate, and by any measure successful, programs in print and broadcast journalism since the early 1980's.
The degree of specialisation available at CSU - where students take either print or broadcast subjects in their practical journalism major - has been the main reason for the success of its graduates. The Henningham journalism program model suggested that the academic unit should be at least the size of an independent department with adequate equipment resourcing and a staff of at least half a dozen full-time lecturers and a Chair in Journalism. The article was quite dismissive of smaller journalism programs presumably interpreted by Henningham as any program with less than 10 journalism subjects in its undergraduate program.
It was apparent to most journalism academics around Australia that only a few courses could hope to fulfil adequately Henningham's ideal - and only one did: his own University of Queensland program. His attack on other programs drew a strong rebuttal from the Course Coordinator of Bond, one of those 'smaller' programs. The then President of JEA, Mark Pearson, in his Presidential Address to the 1994 Annual Conference suggested that the smaller programs had much to offer their students, like greater access to resources -- equipment and staff -- than would be available in the larger courses (Pearson 1994). While lauding diversity in courses and subject offerings, Pearson suggested that the convergence of technologies was leading to niche journalism, which the 'boutique' courses were in a better position to handle than the bigger courses with classes sometimes in the hundreds.
Pearson concluded that journalism educators working in smaller programs -- the majority of the current courses -- recognised that the benefits of being
small can outweigh the shortcomings (Pearson 1994).
When Henningham's "big is best' treatise was given another airing
some seven months later in The Australian Higher Education section
(14/6/95), it ignited further reaction. The University of Wollongong's Eric
Loo pointed out that while the UOW postgraduate program didn't meet
Henningham's ideal, its staff-to-student ratio was 1:13, and coupled with
constant one-on-one consultation and subject flexibility it had 'pluses on
pedagogical strategies' (Loo 1995).
But the discussion in Australia has been relatively tame compared with
the United States, where academics and employers have been having a very
vigorous debate over what should be in courses and what students should
learn. American academics are being attacked for undertaking research
rather than addressing what's seen as a 'classroom crisis of kids now in journalism school who can't spell or write much less cover a story' (Corrigan
1993). A former President of the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication in the United States (AEJMC) ~ representing the tertiary communication education sector in America ~ entered the debate:
'So many of us are so busy with our own academic specialities that we don't worry about the grubby workaday world that confronts our graduates'. (Beasley 1990).
A survey of Associated Press Managing Editors published in 1995 voted desktop publishing eighth on a list of 11 topics that journalism schools should emphasise beyond the basics of writing and editing (Russial 1995).
The five most mentioned were thinking analytically, presentation of information, understanding numbers in the news, listening to readers and writing tighter. Three of the five most-desirable areas could be classified as practical skills, with the other two as theoretical skills. The Associated Press editors felt critical thinking was the most important skill and technical skills were not particularly important (Russial 1995). This at a time in Australia when one of the main concerns -- as will be seen later in this chapter - of many Course Coordinators nationwide is about keeping up-to-date with the latest newsgathering and processing technology.
But it is not only 'the industry' that is attacking journalism programs in the U.S. Some university administrators believe what they call 'professional schools' like journalism should be funded not by the university, but by the industries they serve (Medoff 1994). Across the United States programs are trying to stave off extinction (Beasley 1995). In a recent American report 29% of journalism educators surveyed said that their program had been threatened in the past 10 years, and 22% reported journalism programs had been merged with other programs on their campuses (Allen 1996).
(The candidate's survey later in this chapter shows that the level of industry support for journalism programs in Australia is very low).
The AEJMC in the United States, which represents more than 3,000 journalism staff, students, administrators and professionals involved in about
400 programs, produced a Curriculum Task Force report titled Responding to the challenge of change (AEJMC 1996). Among other things, it looked at some of the issues canvassed in this chapter ~ like the split between practical and theoretical journalism subjects and the extent to which the course should also provide a liberal education. It recommended that the theoretical / practical mix be left to individual programs and endorsed the need for more than half of the degree to include liberal arts subjects (AEJMC 1996). (The report is discussed further in the context of accreditation later in the chapter).
As noted in Chapter 1, the candidate has split the Australian courses into four groups: those with 10 or more journalism subjects in an undergraduate degree of at least 20 subjects; those with between six and nine journalism subjects in their undergraduate structure; those with less than six subjects in an undergraduate journalism program; and the two stand alone postgraduate programs. By 'journalism subjects' the author means subjects unique to the journalism degree and not shared by other communication programs in the faculty, school or department.
These divisions were chosen because if a program has more than 10 journalism subjects in its structure, it means that journalism alone can represent up to more than half the degree. If a course has between six and nine journalism subjects in the structure, there's at least one journalism subject every semester of a six semester course and the journalism subjects represent between a quarter and nearly 40% of the degree. The final undergraduate degree group, where there are less than six journalism subjects in the structure, are those where journalism is not a major part of the degree, and students can't take a journalism subject every semester. In reality these courses involve only two or three journalism subjects in an undergraduate structure of at least 22 subjects.
Using information gathered from primary sources (the 22 interviews with Course Coordinators) and secondary sources (University handbooks or calendars and information booklets provided by the various courses), a diagrammatic representation of each of the programs has been created. Each time a completed questionnaire was returned to the respective interviewee for review, the appropriate course diagram was also included for approval. In most cases, since the majority of interviews were undertaken in the last half of
1995, the information in the diagram reflects the course structure for that year.
In at least two cases -- Queensland University of Technology and the
University of Newcastle ~ new course structures were introduced in 1996, and the diagram represents the latest version of the respective course structure. At the time of writing, CSU is restructuring the BA
(Communication), including the print and broadcast journalism streams. A slightly-altered common first year was introduced in 1997, with a view to introducing the restructured degree in 1998, after a Faculty review of the course (Patching 1996). (The 22 diagrams are contained in Appendix 2).
The diagrams show the position of each subject in the overall structure of each program. They show when the various journalism subjects, other compulsory subjects, and electives are taken during the course of each program, and give details of the various elective choices. These diagrams provided the basis for collating the comparative data for the following discussion.
Course Structures:
Table 1 shows the overall number of subjects in each degree; the number of journalism subjects in each degree; the number of electives allowed and whether there are any compulsory subjects in the degree other than the journalism subjects.
It shows that there are six programs that qualify for inclusion in the first group (and qualify for consideration under the Henningham model) with
10 or more journalism subjects in a 20+ subject undergraduate journalism program. They are the programs at Charles Sturt University, James Cook
University of North Queensland, University of Queensland, Queensland
University of Technology, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the
University of South Australia. The University of Queensland offers the program with the equal highest number of journalism subjects --14 for students undertaking a journalism double major. Another institution in Brisbane, the Queensland University of Technology, also provides 14
journalism subjects in their degree.
Half the programs (11) fit into the second category ~ those with
TABLE 1
COURSES BY SUBJECTS IN THE DEGREE, JOURNALISM SUBJECTS, ELECTIVES AND OTHER COMPULSORY SUBJECTS. AS OF NOVEMBER, 1996
SUBJECTS IN JOURNALISM ELECTIVES OTHER NAME DEGREE SUBJECTS ALLOWED COMPULSORY SUBJECTS Bond 24 6 14 4 Canberra 20 6 6 8 Central Queensland 24 6 18 - Charles Sturt 24 10 6 8 Curtin 22 8 10 4
Deakin 24 8 16 - Edith Cowan 22 3 4 15 # Griffith (Brisbane) 24 6 6 12 Griffith (Gold Coast) 24 6 4 14 James Cook 24 12 6 6 Monash 20 6 2 12 Murdoch 6 5 0 1 Newcastle 24 7 6 1
Qld 24 14 10 - QUT 24 14 6 4 RMIT 27 12 10 5 USA 24 12 8 4 USQ 24 7 8 9 Swinburne 24 2 18 4 UTS 20 7 2 11 UWS 24 3 12 9
Wollongong 12 10 2 -
* Includes year-long subjects, so number represents equivalent number of single- semester subjects.
# Includes 12 subject major study. between six and nine journalism subjects in their undergraduate degree.
They are the programs at Bond University, the University of Canberra,
Central Queensland University, Curtin University of Technology, Deakin
University, both the Brisbane and Gold Coast Griffith University campuses,
Monash University, the University of Newcastle, the University of Southern
Queensland and the University of Technology, Sydney.
There are only three programs in the third category - where there are less than six journalism subjects in the undergraduate degree. They are at
Edith Cowan University and the University of Western Sydney, which have only three journalism subjects in their modest programs, and the Swinburne
University of Technology in suburban Melbourne which has only two journalism subjects in its program.
The final group comprises the two stand alone postgraduate programs
- at Murdoch and Wollongong Universities, with five journalism subjects in the Murdoch postgraduate Diploma and twice as many (10) in the
Wollongong MA.
The table also shows that all 20 undergraduate programs have at least
20 subjects. The RMIT program has the largest number of subjects with 27.
More than two-thirds (14) have 24 subjects (four subjects per semester for six semesters or three years). Two programs have 22 subjects, and three have 20.
These latter programs tend to have four subjects for the two first-year semesters, and three per semester for the four semesters of the second and third years of the courses. Electives
With electives, all subjects except the journalism electives, and any other compulsory subjects, are included. In many cases, the electives include majors, sub-majors or minors (usually comprising six, four or three subjects respectively) that must be taken from a prescribed and sometimes limited number of disciplines. But because the individual student can 'elect' which subject area they will study, they have been included in the 'elective' count.
It could be assumed that the postgraduate courses allowed the least number of electives, given the nature of the degree and the limited course duration, and that was the case. The Murdoch one-year diploma allows no electives, and the 18-month Wollongong program allows for journalism electives and non-journalism electives in its 12 subject structure. Thus, students could do all 12 subjects from the schedule of journalism subjects if they chose, or reduce the number of journalism subjects by taking up to three electives from other disciplines.
Two programs ~ Swinburne and Central Queensland ~ allow three- quarters of the degree to be taken in electives, a total of 18 of the 24 subjects.
The next largest number of electives is allowed in the Deakin University program (16), followed by 14 at Bond and 12 at the University of Western
Sydney. Three other courses ~ Curtin, Queensland and RMIT ~ each allow 10 electives in their structure. In summary, eight of the 20 undergraduate courses allow 10 or more electives in their degrees. The other 12 undergraduate courses allow less than ten, with half of them allowing six.
The lowest number of general electives in an undergraduate degree is two, at one of the newest courses ~ Monash ~ and the University of Technology
Sydney.
The course diagrams also show that more than two-thirds of the 20 undergraduate programs (13) have at least six compulsory subjects in the first year. In all but two cases (RMIT and UTS) there are eight subjects in the first year of their respective programs. Both RMIT and UTS have nine subjects in their first year, and RMIT has five compulsory subjects in its first year, and UTS seven. The courses with the lowest number of compulsory subjects in
the first year - and conversely the courses with the highest number of
electives in the first year -- are Central Queensland, Deakin, Edith Cowan and
Swinburne - all with two compulsory subjects of the eight subjects taken in
their first year.
At the other end of the scale, the only courses with eight compulsory
subjects in the first year are CSU and the new program at Griffith on the Gold
Coast where students pick eight from a total of 11, but thaf s as far as the
choice goes. The number of electives in the first year of the respective
courses range from one at Monash and two at 11 other programs (Bond,
Canberra, Curtin, Griffith - Brisbane, James Cook, Newcastle, QUT, South
Australia, Southern Queensland, UTS and UWS) to a high of six at UCQ,
Deakin, Edith Cowan and Swinburne. These also have the least number of
compulsory subjects in the first year, as noted above.
Thirteen of the 20 undergraduate programs begin the study of practical
journalism subjects in the first year of the course. The other seven programs --
Edith Cowan, both Griffith courses, Monash, South Australia, Swinburne and
Western Sydney -- began their journalism programs in second year. It should
be noted, though, that journalism students at the University of South
Australia do shorthand in their first year, and while it is a very practical journalism skill, it is not considered a practical journalism subject for the
purposes of this discussion. Theory v. Practical
There's always been conflict in journalism education about the split within the courses between theoretical and practical subjects. On the one hand employers have wanted graduates who know the 'basics' of writing a story rather than having the majority of the journalism component of their degree dominated by theory subjects (Della-Giustina 1985, Case 1994 and
Russial 1995). On the other hand, a nuniber of the interviewees mentioned pressure from University administrators interested in seeing more theory subjects in the journalism sequence. Striking the right balance between being either too skills-based in the eyes of university administrators and other academics or too theoretical in the eyes of 'the industry' has always been a problem for journalism academics.
Asking the various Coordinators to characterise subjects as either theory or practical posed problems for a number of the interviewees. While some readily nominated subjects as practical, and others theory, others said that it was impossible to separate theory from practice. To others it was not that clear cut. To the candidate, it seemed fairly obvious that an ethics or law subject was theoretical, but a subject designated as Broadcast Journalism or
Sub-editing was a practical 'how to' subject. Naturally, the lectures would contain theory on how to write or edit, but the difference would be in the assignments, usually involving regular news writing or editing work.
Assignments in the theory subjects on the other hand would involve essays and/or examinations.
Some Course Coordinators said the theory came in the communication or media studies sequences that were either compulsory or elective within the degree and maintained that the majority of the journalism major subjects were practical. The program with the highest theoretical component, not unexpectedly, is the course with the longest tradition of University-based journalism education, the University of Queensland. Depending on elective choices (there are nine compulsory subjects, only one of which Coordinator
Bruce Grundy classified as practical, and five journalism electives, in the 14- subject journalism double major), the percentage of theory in the double major can vary from 50% to a maximum of about 86%. The two stand alone
postgraduate programs -- Murdoch and Wollongong -- both have about 50%
theory in their courses, as does the undergraduate program at Griffith
University's Gold Coast campus. Newcastle and QUT have about 43%
theory, followed by CSU and Deakin with 40% theory in their programs.
Most Coordinators were at pains to emphasise the practical nature of their
courses, using phrases like 'majority practical' (Deakin) and 'all very practical'
(RMIT). The courses with some of the lower percentages of theory
components (ignoring those claimed as 100% practical because the theory
came in the media or communication studies subjects within the program)
were Central Queensland (16.7%), Curtin (12.5%), James Cook (15.8%) and
Southern Queensland (14%). Law / ethics / research / politics
Henningham's core curriculum proposed that there should be separate
subjects in journalism ethics, journalism law and journalism research
methods. (Henningham 1994). The candidate believes that all Australian
journalism students should also have a thorough grounding in Australian
politics - since it is his belief that the majority of stories in the mass media
involve politics in one form or another. Thus the survey asked whether these
areas were handled in separate compulsory or elective subjects.
Sheridan Burns has pointed out that all journalism educators surveyed
believed in the importance of ethics classes for journalism students. Some
preferred to discuss ethical issues as they arose in practical journalism
subjects rather than canvass the issues in a separate subject divorced from the
practical environment. It was a matter of differing philosophical positions on
the issue -- what the planners of each program thought was the most appropriate way to handle ethics (Sheridan Burns 1994). The candidate's survey found much the same situation regarding how crucial journaUsm law topics such as defamation, contempt of court and contempt of Parliament should be taught in the various programs. Those who didn't have a separate law subject felt it was better taught combined with practical or other theoretical components of the course.
Table 2 shows that journalism law is most popularly run as a separate subject. Nearly two thirds of the programs surveyed (13) have a law subject.
TABLE 2
PROGRAMS WITH ETHICS, LAW, RESEARCH AND AUSTRALIAN POLITICS SUBJECTS
INSTITUTION LAW ETHICS RESEARCH POLITICS Bond No Yes No No Canberra Yes No Yes No Central Qld No No No No CSU Combined Law and Ethics Yes Yes Curtin Option Option No No Deakin Yes No Yes No Edith Cowan No No No No Griffith Yes Yes Yes No (Brisbane) Griffith (G No No No No Coast) James Cook Yes No No Yes Monash No No Yes No Murdoch Combined Law and Ethics No Yes (history) Newcastle No Yes Yes No Queensland Yes Yes Yes No QUI No Yes Yes Yes RMIT Yes No No No Sth Australia Yes Yes No Yes Sthn Qld Combined Law and Ethics Yes Yes Swinburne No No No No UTS Option No No No UWS No No Yes Yes Wollongong Yes Yes Yes No but at three institutions (CSU, Murdoch and Southern Queensland) it is combined with the ethics subject, and at two institutions (Curtin and UTS) it is an option. At one institution (Canberra) students can take the law subject or a skills subject approved by the Head of School. Half, and not always the courses with a separate law subject, have a separate ethics subject and as mentioned above in three instances it is combined with the law subject and in the Curtin course it is again an option. The table also shows that half the programs (H) -- but not all of those that have a separate ethics subject -- have a separate research methods subject. While the candidate believes that a thorough understanding of Australian politics is essential for entry-level journalists, less than a third of the planners of the country's 22 journalism programs agree. Only seven - CSU, James Cook, Murdoch, QUT, South Australia, Southern Queensland and Western Sydney -- have an Australian politics subject. In the Murdoch course it is the only non-journalism subject in the eight-subject Graduate Diploma. Under the title of 'Australia since 1945' it covers 'the major characteristics of, and changes in, the nation's economy, society and politics since 1945' (Murdoch handbook 1995). Wollongong ran a public journalism subject for several years, but dropped it under pressure to reduce overall subject numbers (Lloyd 1996). Only two programs have all four of the designated subjects —law, ethics, research and Australian politics — and in both cases law and ethics are combined in one subject. They are the programs at CSU and Southern Queensland. (The candidate is currently contesting a suggestion that the Australian politics subject be dropped from the compulsory requirements of a restructured BA (Communication) at CSU (Patching 1996).) Five programs -- Murdoch, Queensland, QUI, South Australia and
Wollongong ~ have three of the four, but only in two cases (Murdoch and
South Australia) are they the same three. The only patterns to emerge among
these five programs is that they include the two stand alone postgraduate
programs, and the three undergraduate programs in the group are among the
big journalism programs -- those with 10 or more journalism subjects in their
24-subject programs. Obviously the big programs have larger compulsory
journalism components in their programs, and the opportunity to include
such areas of study as separate subjects. Specialisation?
What chance is there to specialise in Australian journalism courses?
The best example is the Bachelor of Applied Science in Sports Studies (Sports
Media) at the University of Canberra. It has a low intake (10 to 20 students a
year) and students in 1995 needed to be in the top 12% for academic
excellence (using New South Wales tertiary entrance ranking data) to qualify
for admission. It is not offered by the Faculty of Communications controlling
Canberra's journalism program, and contains only three journalism subjects.
At the time of writing, the course was under threat because the University
administration has said it will not support courses with less than 50 students
(Bilboe 1995).
In terms of specialising within a journalism program, CSU's course is
the only program that allows students to specialise in either print or broadcast journalism. At Queensland, a student can develop a print or broadcast major
by the selection of the appropriate electives, but it is optional, not
compulsory. All other programs offer students subjects in both areas. The new Griffith (Gold Coast) course specialises in television journalism although students can take a print journahsm sequence from the sister
campus at Nathan in Brisbane.
Curtin started a specialist course in Rural Journalism in 1982. It was
the first of its kind in Australia and New Zealand and was set up at the
request of the rural press across the country. In its first year it had five
students on industry scholarships taking the course and aimed to equip its
graduates with skills in agriculture and journalism 'with a rural bias' (Apps
1982). The course is now defunct.
While most courses allow for specialisation through elective studies in
areas like politics, economics, arts / law, languages and literature, some
programs are developing more distinctly specialist courses. RMIT is planning
Graduate Diplomas in science reporting and the reporting of religion, and
proposes to extend the offering to include political journalism and business
reporting strands (Ricketson 1995). Griffith (Brisbane) wants to introduce a
specialisation in cross-cultural reporting (Meadows 1995) and UWS has
considered a sports journalism speciality (Rose 1995). James Cook hopes to
offer science journalism as a specialisation once the program is fully-
established, later adding specialist reporting subjects in politics and
economics. Several courses offer specialisation 'in reverse' in their
postgraduate offerings with students coming to these courses with a specialist
undergraduate qualification and then 'specialising' in journalism.
Students in Murdoch's postgraduate diploma course have a
specialisation from their undergraduate degree and have the opportunity to
enhance it in the project elective in the second and final semester of the course
(Simms 1995). Wollongong's MA allows for specialisation through its
prerequisite of an undergraduate degree and inclusion of options for non- journaHsm majors (Lloyd 1996). Administrative comparison
TABLE 3
JOURNALISM COURSES BY FACULTY, DEPARTMENT AND TITLE. AS OF NOVEMBER, 1996
NAME FACULTY DEPARTMENT DEGREE Bond Humanities and Communication and BA or B Comm Social Sciences Media Studies (Business) Canberra Communication Communication, BA Comm - Media and Tourism Journalism Central Qld Arts Communication and BA Media Studies CSU Arts Communication BA Comm - Journalism Curtin Humanities Communication and BA (English) Cultural Studies Deakin Arts Literary and BA Communication Studies Edith Cowan Arts Media Studies BA Griffith (Brisbane) Humanities Film and Media BA (Comm) Griffith (Gold Education and the Arts BA Coast) Arts James Cook Arts English BJ Monash Arts Humanities and Social BA (Journalism) Sciences Murdoch Humanities — Graduate Diploma in Journalism Newcastle Arts and Social Communication and BA (Comm Studies) Sciences Media Arts Qld Arts Journalism BA QUT Arts Media and Journalism BA (Journalism) RMIT Art, Design and Communication BA (Journalism) Communications Studies USA Humanities and Communication BA (Journalism) Social Sciences USQ Arts Mass Communication BA Swinburne Business, Media, Literature and BA Humanities and Film Social Science UTS Humanities and Social Communication BA Social Sciences and Journalism (Communication) UWS Humanities and Language and BA Social Sciences Interaction Studies (Communication Studies) Wollongong Creative Arts Graduate School of MA (Journalism) Journalism Table 3 looks at the faculty in which the course is located, the name of
the department in which the program is located, and the precise name of the
program. It shows that journalism is clearly seen by the university sector
as a humanities or liberal arts discipline. The courses are almost all located in
a humanities / social sciences / arts faculty. For the first two decades of its
life, the journalism program at QUT was the 'odd one out' being located in the
Business faculty and only transferring to the Arts faculty in 1995 (Granato,
1995). The Masters program at the University of Wollongong began in 1990
in the Faculty of Arts, only to be transferred after an internal university
review to the Faculty of Creative Arts in 1995.
The names of the departments or schools in which the courses are
located vary, too, but generally involve descriptions like communication,
media studies, cultural studies, mass communication, literature, language or
film. There is only one stand alone Department of Journalism offering both
undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Australia -- at the University of
Queensland ~ and three stand alone Schools of Communication or
Communication Studies, at CSU, RMIT and the University of South Australia.
Wollongong has the only stand alone Graduate School of Journalism. Most
of the undergraduate degrees are variations of a Bachelor of Arts. More than
a third (8) of the courses lead to a BA, while others call their qualification a BA
in Journalism (4) or a BA in Communication or Communication Studies (6).
There is only one Bachelor of Journalism (BJ) in Australia, at James Cook, one
of the country's newest programs. The only other variation among the
undergraduate courses is at Curtin, where the journalism major has been part of a BA (English) since its inception in the mid-70's (Apps 1995).
The candidate's survey also looked at the courses from the perspective of what outlets exist for the students' practical work.
TABLE 4
BROADCAST OUTPUT FROM COURSES 1996
INSTITUTION RADIO TELEVISION Bond SEA-FM local news No'^ Canberra No No Central Qld No'^ csu 2MCE-FM News & C. No'^ Aff. Curtin 6NR News & C. Aff. Some SBS production Deakin No No Edith Cowan No No Griffith (Brisbane) No No Griffith (G. Coast) No No James Cook No No Monash No No Murdoch 6UVS-FM production No Newcastle 2NUR-FM News & No C.Aff. Queensland PRN News (defunct) No QUT 4ED News & C. Aff. Briz 31 RMIT 3RRR News RMITV Channel 31 Sth Australia 5UV News No Sthn Qld 4DDB-FM News No Swinburne 3CR weekly program No UTS No No UWS No No Wollongong 2FOX-FM program No
* Denotes 'mock' radio bulletins or 'mock' television production.
Table 4 shows that students at more than half the courses (12) had a
practical outlet for their radio production work at the time of the candidate's
visit. The program with one of the biggest regular radio news production involvements at that time ~ the University of Queensland -- has since ceased that involvement. Until late October, 1996, the University of Queensland journalism students had been providing news for the Public Radio Network (PRN) of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA), a
consortium of most of Australia's 100-plus community radio stations. This
involved providing morning news stories and afternoon news bulletins year
round for more than 30 community radio stations across the country.
Grundy characterised it as issue-based news, rather than 'fire-engine chasing'
news (Grundy 1995). PRN had been in financial difficulties for some time ~
mainly because the community stations, with their limited financial resources,
had been lax in paying the fees associated with providing the satellite-
delivered bulletins, and when the Public Broadcasting Foundation declined to
provide funding to keep the service afloat, it folded (CBAA documents 1996
ànd Media Report 1996).
The other 11 programs with strong radio news and current affairs
production outlets are, in all but once case (Bond), involved with local
community radio stations, in four instances ~ at CSU, Curtin, Murdoch and
Newcastle ~ the radio station is run wholly or partly by the respective
program's University. Also, the University of South Australia provides a
daily news bulletin for the Adelaide University station, 5UV. Broadcast
students at Bond University help write the local news for a Gold Coast
commercial station, SEA-FM.
The course with the largest radio production output is at Charles Sturt
University in Bathurst. Broadcast journalism students are rostered almost
year-round to provide news and to provide a daily current affairs program
during semester times. The students provide a total of seven five-minute bulletins a day, and a half-hour daily local current affairs program five days a week, Monday to Friday. The students provide more than an hour of news and current affairs programming each weekday (Patching 1996). The television output of the courses is, given the costs involved and the limited opportunities for involvement, much less. While a number of the courses have 'mock' TV production exercises as part of the television journalism component of their course, only three actually have a production outlet. Students at Curtin in Western Australia provide the researching and reporting expertise to be combined with majors from the TV production course in the same department to make documentaries of 15 or 30 minutes' duration for the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). Several are made each year (Apps, 1995). Television journalism students at RMIT produce current affairs stories for use on the Melbourne community television station, RMIT-
TV Channel 31, and it is hoped to extend that to news stories (Ricketson 1995).
QUT students prepare packages for the local community TV station, Briz 31
(Granato 1996).
The television journalism students' production at Charles Sturt
University is shown weekly in the Students' Union (usually Monday lunchtime) in the second semester of the year. Final-semester broadcast journalism students undertake a month-long TV workshop which involves groups of two or three students producing a local news story every day
(Monday to Friday) for the first three weeks of the workshop, and then producing a four to five minute current affairs item in the fourth week. The best of each week's stories are produced into a 'mock' bulletin. In the fourth week, the various group's current affairs stories are similarly produced into a
'mock' local current affairs TV program. The students are rostered into groups of between six and 10 to provide both radio and television production over a 16-week period from the middle of July to early November. The local regional television stations in Orange (WIN and Prime) regularly employ final-semester students who haven't completed their course to cover local stories for them using the station's camera operators (Patching 1996).
TABLE 5
PRINT OUTPUT FROM COURSES IN 1996
INSTITUTION REGULAR PUBLICATIONS OTHER 'ONE-OFFS' Bond Email university 'paper' Various 'specials' Canberra Annual feature magazine
Central Qld Felix Culpa tabloid newspaper ~ three per semester CSU Artefact Arts Faculty 'One-off magazines and magazine twice yearly specials for local newspaper
Curtin Western Independent Regular ~ local newspaper Deakin Newstand magazine Twice Internet 'paper' Ausnews with yearly Geelong Advertiser
Edith Cowan -
Griffith (Brisbane) -
Griffith (G. Coast) Print course option from — Griffith's Brisbane course
James Cook -
Monash Annual magazine proposed -
Murdoch Newsquest course magazine - Newcastle Back Space course magazine
Queensland Weekend Independent — Newspaper 25 times yearly QUT Communique newspaper usually six times per semester and 'on line'
RMIT — 'Dummy' boutique publications Sth. Aust. Four student-organised publications per semester
Sthn Qld. News Sense course publication ~ Fortnightly during semester
Swinburne ~ Newsletters and student newspaper. Swine
UTS Snoop and Reportage — magazines UWS ilnipulse fortnightly newspaper for Penrith/St Marys district Wollongong Links on-line magazine Table 5 shows the publications from the various print journalism subjects. Again the major production is undertaken at the University of
Queensland -- the fortnightly local newspaper, the Weekend Independent, which is circulated in the suburbs around the university. It has been published 25 times a year since 1992. Editor Bruce Grundy said in 1995 the fact that the
Weekend Independent was then only 24 pages was more a limitation imposed by the Hmited advertising opportunities in the area than a lack of stories
(Grundy 1995). Students in all three years of the undergraduate degree write for the paper and it has an investigative journalism flavour (The National
Interest, Radio Nationai 1996). The Department of Journalism and the
University subsidise the 'above the line' production costs associated with the production. There's an Editor, Chief of Staff, accounts person, another to look after advertisements, two desktop publishing people and a photographer. With the exception of one of the DTP people and the photographer, the others are members of the Department of Journalism staff who work on the newspaper one week each fortnight on top of their teaching and / or administrative loads. (Grundy 1995).
The next biggest regular newspaper is Curtin University's Western
Independent. Second-year journalism students write the stories for this publication and the final-year students write for it, lay it out and take any pictures required. The print-run of about 3,000 (usually four times per semester) is circulated mainly around the Curtin campus, but several hundred are posted out to politicians, public servants and local businesses
(Apps 1995). University of Western Sydney students also produce a newspaper for their local area, a fortnightly published during semesters and titled Unipulse. QUT students produce their newspaper. Communique, about six times a
semester, and University of Southern Queensland produce their tabloid News
Sense fortnightly during semester. Further north, Central Queensland
University journalism students produce their tabloid course newspaper Felix
Culpa three times per semester. Students of the Swinburne course don't have
a specific course newspaper but contribute to the student newspaper. Swine.
Three institutions produce their material 'on-line'. Bond University
produces a daily Email news bulletin titled Campus PM during the first six
weeks of the second semester, and in 1995 produced a daily Internet news
bulletin during the last half of the year titled Australian News Briefs. Deakin
University is involved in an Internet newspaper called Ausnews produced in
conjunction with the local Geelong Advertiser. Wollongong University's MA
journalism students produce an on-line magazine titled Links as part of one of
their print journalism subjects. Some print production newspapers and
magazines of various courses are also 'published' on their respective course
web sites on the Internet.
Most of the other courses produce a magazine at least once a year. The
biggest magazine production is undertaken as part of the UTS course.
Through the research centre attached to the journalism school, the Australian
Centre for Independent Journalism, students write for and help produce the
media magazines Reportage and Snoop, which are circulated nationally.
The other regular course publications are an annual magazine at
Canberra University, the twice-yearly faculty magazine Artefact at Charles
Sturt University, Newstand magazine twice yearly at Deakin, the course
magazine Newsquest at Murdoch, the course magazine Back Space at
Newcastle, and four student publications per semester at the University of
South Australia. Only two of the established courses -- Edith Cowan and RMIT -- don't
have a regular course publication. Three of the newest courses - Griffith
(Brisbane), James Cook and Monash -- at the time of writing had yet to have
students in the final year of their respective courses, but expect to produce
some form of annual publication in due course. Griffith (Gold Coast) can
take print journalism as an elective from the Nathan campus. The second
column in Table 4 shows other, irregular publications from the various
courses. Several courses produce newsletters for clients, while others are
involved in various special 'one-off publications. In the past 18 months,
print students at CSU have been involved in producing a series of four-page
tabloid feature-style inserts for the Bathurst newspaper. The Western Advocate.
They produce the inserts to the 'camera ready' stage. In the second semester
of 1996 they also produced a 42-page magazine coinciding with the 20th
anniversary of the university's radio station titled Freequency (Patching 1996).
Bond University students have been involved in a number of special
'one off publications. They produced a four-page wrap-around for the local
daily, the Gold Coast Bulletin, for delegates to a PANPA (Pacific Area
Newspaper Publishers' Association) Conference on the Coast in 1991.
During the 1995 Queensland state election they produced a daily news briefs
publication for the Internet. They also produced three special editions of that publication looking at issues and candidates on the Gold Coast. Their
Internet bulletins also include voice 'grabs' to bring a multi-media dimension to the exercise (Pearson 1995). Work experience / internships
Work experience leads to jobs for journalism graduates. It offers the student the opportunity to experience journalism in the 'real world' of print or broadcast production. It offers the employer the opportunity to see a potential recruit at first hand. Anecdotal evidence confirms that students
who undertake work experience either regularly during university breaks in
the last two years of their course, or during the compulsory work experience
component - called an internship and requiring each journalism student to
spend a few weeks at appropriate media organisations -- are often invited to
take up full-time work at the host organisation. In some instances they are
offered work before they complete their studies. By late October, 1996, this
had been the case for five final-year CSU broadcast journalist students. On
occasions students have taken up work experience opportunities at the end of
the second year of their course, been offered full-time employment, and
decided not to complete their degrees. In the context of this survey, work
experience, an internship or professional placement, is taken to mean a
formal, informal or encouraged part of the program where students visit a
host organisation to 'shadow' senior journalists, write their version of stories
for review by reporters or sub-editors at the host organisation or where final-
year students are allowed to produce stories for publication, paid or unpaid.
It does not include the work experience undertaken earlier in their degree (or earlier still at High School) where the student is often considered a 'fly on the wair to watch the particular newsroom in operation or used as a general
'gofer'.
A poll of more than 260 editors of American dailies with 25,000-plus circulations in 1985 found that employers showed a 'strong preference' for journalism graduates who had undertaken professional internships (AEJMC
News 1985). In another American study three years later, surveys were sent to 319 broadcast programs, and of the 207 that replied, 99% (all but two) offered an internship as part of their program (Meeske 1988). Internships or work experience in Australia takes different forms in the various courses. TABLE 6
WORK EXPERIENCE (OR INTERNSHIP) PROGRAMS AS OF NOVEMBER, 1997
INSTITUTION COMPULSORY OPTIONAL OR ELECTIVE Bond An elective, with a project alternative, but most do it. Canberra Yes, each student does two weeks, but not as formal part of course. Central Qld. Optional, but encouraged csu Yes, four weeks in final year Curtin Yes, in final semester Deakin Optional, but encouraged. Edith Cowan No formal arrangement, but encouraged Griffith (Brisbane) Optional, but encouraged Griffith (Gold Coast) Optional, but encouraged James Cook Yes, part of final assessment Monash A final semester subject with project alternative. Murdoch An option in final semester. Newcastle Fifth semester elective. Queensland Final semester elective, only 15 places available QUI Fifth or sixth semester elective RMIT Yes, included in final year subjects Sth Aust. Yes, final session subject: two or three weeks. Sthn Qld Yes, majority of Independent Study: four weeks in final year Swinburne Option in final year, only offered to best students UTS Can be taken as elective UWS Elective in place of a journalism assignment: Optional, but encouraged Wollongong Part of elective Major Project; involves one month's work. Project is equivalent of two subjects.
Table 6 shows the while work experience or internships are considered in^portant by the Coordinators in all courses, it is compulsory in only a third (7) of the programs. Only three of those seven courses have the internship or industry placement as a separate subject. They are the programs at CSU,
Curtin, and the University of South Australia. At the University of Southern
Queensland it forms the majority of the subject Independent Study', while at
Canberra each student is required to do two weeks' work experience but it is not a formal part of the course. James Cook is including work experience as part of the final semester assessment (the final year of the course was run for the first time in 1997) and at RMIT it is included as part of final-year practical subjects. In a further third of the courses (7) an industry placement is an elective in the final year, either in fifth semester, sixth, or either. They are the courses at Bond, Newcastle, Queensland, QUT, UTS, UWS, and Wollongong.
At Murdoch it is an 'either / or' option. In final semester they take the work experience subject Journalism Project or Advanced Radio Production. At
Monash, there is a project alternative for those who don't do the final semester professional placement (offered for the first time in 1997). While most Bond students take the work experience subject, it is still an elective, with a project alternative for those who elect not to do it.
Contrary to the Internship subject at CSU, where every print and broadcast major is required to undertake four weeks of approved work experience with appropriate host organisations, there's a strictly limited number of industry placements available for University of Queensland journalism students. It's an elective in the final session, and a maximum of 15 places are offered -- five in print, five in radio and five in television. Students apply for the various opportunities. In print. The Courier Mail takes two students. The Australian s Brisbane and Sydney offices take one each, and The
Cold Coast Bulletin takes one. The interns' work can be published, but there is no payment (Grundy 1995). In radio, the Australian Broadcasting Commission take all five in their Brisbane newsroom. The five internees do a total of 14
days' work (one day a week for the 14-week final semester of the course) each
student on a different day of the week (Lawe-Davies memo to ABC staff
1994). Thus each student does the equivalent of nearly three weeks. At the
time of the interview there were no television internships on offer (Grundy
1995).
The length of the internship varies from course to course, too. For
those who take the internship or industry placement subject at Bond, it's a
minimum of two weeks. Canberra, as noted earlier, requires two weeks work
experience of every student, even though it is not a formal part of the course.
CSU, Wollongong and USQ have the longest requirement -- four weeks.
South Australia requires two or three weeks.
CSU has long-standing formal arrangements with the Sydney
commercial television stations (7, 9 and 10) to take final-year students, and the
agreement with ABC TV and radio provides for the students to be paid $100
per week expenses. There are also formal arrangements with the major
regional networks in New South Wales, WIN (Wollongong) and NBN
(Newcastle) to take broadcast journalism students at their various regional
newsrooms. CSU print lecturers have similar arrangements with the Fairfax
and News Limited organisations in Sydney to provide work experience for
their final year students, and also send students to local and regional
newspapers, suburban papers in Sydney and various magazine production
houses (Patching 1996). Most programs have similar arrangements but seem
less formal, using contacts built up over many years in the media and journalism education to place students with appropriate host organisations.
Deakin University, as well as organising work experience at regional newspaper, radio and television outlets, has several special awards sponsored by The Age and the Geelong Advertiser. The Age provides three months' work
at the end of the winner's course, and the Geelong Advertiser award provides
for six weeks' work experience for a second-year student (Hurst 1995). In the
Murdoch course, for those who elect to take in internship subject in second
semester titled 'Journalism Project', it is the equivalent of at least two weeks'
work. Most take on a client and produce a newsletter (Simms 1995).
Under the new Newcastle course structure, the industry placement is a
fifth semester elective. Students have to apply to be able to take the subject.
To be successful the student must have a grade point average better than a
pass, have at least three semester's study in journalism, and submit a list of
potential placements and detail of what they would do there. It is taken as
eight hours per week for a semester, or in a three-week block (Sheridan Burns
1995). At Swinburne, too, students must apply to do the elective work
experience subject, and only the best are approved. While they are expected
to do at least 40 hours, most tend to do three weeks (Vigo 1995).
The work experience is mostly organised through the lecturing staff.
While at some institutions the individual student is required to find a suitable
host organisation, the staff usually follow up the initial approach to formalise
the arrangement. Some programs have formal documents signed between
the parties. CSU has been using an Internship booklet of about 16 pages for
at least five years. The booklet covers work experience requirements for all
five strands of the BA (Communication) and contains a section for a representative of the host organisation to comment on the student's performance and suitability (Patching 1996). Most Coordinators agreed their work experience programs involved a mix of student suggestions and staff- organisation to fill established placements with major employer groups. Industry support
Work experience is sometimes the only tangible industry support
enjoyed by some courses. Industry support takes several forms across the
various courses, from providing work experience opportunities to allowing
staff to give guest lectures, review student work or act as part-time tutors, to
serving on Course Advisory Committees or simply offering ad hoc advice on
course content. As is seen by the Deakin experience mentioned above,
awards from two major Victorian employers -- John Fairfax and the Geelong
Advertiser group - provide the most sought-after work experience
opportunities.
CSU has enjoyed a high level of industry support from the relatively-
early days of the course. The unique Mitchell Foundation scheme at the
University has seen a number of media organisations provide yearly
scholarships, usually worth $2000 for one year, to journalism students. The
local Bathurst commercial radio station 2BS provides two annual
scholarships, one to a journalism student, the other to an advertising major.
The Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB) also provide two
scholarships, one for a journalism student. The Seven network provides a
similar annual scholarship for a student interested in television journalism.
From 1997, an annual scholarship has been offered by Australian Associated
Press (School of Communication Board minutes, 23/10/96). The Rural Press
group offers two scholarships to final-year CSU journalism students ~ each
worth $3000 for a student in their final year and guaranteeing the winner a
year's work with a Rural Press newspaper or radio station at the end of their
course. There's a third Rural Press scholarship offered to journalism students across the country (Patching 1996). The biggest supporter of the CSU course is the Nine Network which
offers three three-year scholarships, each worth $6000 a year. Each donor
(with the exception of FARB) offers work experience during university breaks
to their scholarship winners and the recipients often land jobs with those
organisations at the end of the course. Another scholarship unique to CSU is
offered by the Albury-Wodonga radio station 2AY /B104.9. It offers a
broadcast student in final year a year's paid work experience (worth about
$13,000) between the student's fifth and sixth semesters of study. Each year
the Jakarta-based English language newspaper, the Indonesian Observer, offers
a year's paid work to a final-semester print journalism student. Students are
employed by the paper in Jakarta as language consultants. This on-going
opportunity to work in Indonesia was organised during a study tour to the
country by 21 CSU students and four staff in December, 1989 (Patching 1996).
Bond has a unique scholarship program with their local daily, the Gold
Coast Bulletin. Because of the Bond three-semesters per year system, they
have organised The Gold Coast Bulletin Cadetship / Scholarship Program
where the winners study at Bond one session, work at the Bulletin the next,
return to studies the next semester and so on for a total of four years - two
years' (six semesters') study, and two years' cadetship. After the four years
the students graduate to a guaranteed job on the Bulletin. There are one or
two scholarships a year, depending on the Bulletin s staffing needs.
Recipients are given a half-fee scholarship by the University. The students are only paid for the periods they work for the paper and the scholarships are only open to Gold Coast residents (Pearson 1995).
Industry support for the Canberra course, aside from work experience attachments at the local ABC, is limited to an annual prize provided by the local branch of the MEAA. In Rockhampton, students at CQU are awarded annual monetary prizes sponsored by the local paper. The Morning Bulletin
and the local WIN Television station (Sedorkin 1996). Course Advisory Committees
A number of courses have Course Advisory Committees including
representatives from industry and the MEAA. The University of Queensland
tried to put one in place but staff rejected the idea, deciding they were better
off standing on their own feet and not seeking outside advice on course
matters (Grundy 1995).
Places are provided for journalism industry representatives on
Wollongong University's Faculty of Creative Arts Committee, but none have
been appointed. Chair in Journalism at Wollongong, Professor Clem Lloyd
voiced a common view when he said such committees are useful for
publicising a course, but were not likely to help with the 'big things', like
equipment or a new building (Lloyd, 1996).
Located on Broadway in the centre of Sydney, UTS has been able to call
on a range of guest speakers from nearby news media offices. In the first half
of 1996 UTS instituted a lunchtime guest lecture series titled Talking
Journalism'. Early guests included Adele Horan and John Casimir (a CSU
graduate) from the SMH and Liz Jackson from Four Corners (Bacon 1996).
While a number of courses indicated they had Course Advisory
Committees, a number were either School or Faculty committees which meant
they could have only one journalism industry representative. A number of
the Course Coordinators admitted their advisory committees met once, maybe twice a year. Others met even less often. Others said they were in the process of establishing such committees. CSU made use of its Course
Advisory Committee whenever the program faced a review from the now- defunct New South Wales Higher Education Board in the 1970's and 1980's, but this ceased to exist with the estabhshment of the University. While the
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Associate Professor Ross Chambers, sought recommendations for the membership of a re-constituted committee in 1994, the committee has yet to be formed The senior journalism staff prefers personal contact with senior industry contacts and former students to keep them abreast of industry changes and to make suggestions for alterations or additions to course structure and content (Patching 1996). Union involvement
If practical industry support for Australia's journalism courses is limited, the degree of formal support from the union, the MEAA, is scant.
Several journalism academics serve on MEAA committees (various state judiciary, ethics and executive committees), and a handful have MEAA representation on Course Advisory Committees that rarely meet. While
MEAA members will sometimes turn up if asked to address students about the union or ethics, that's about the extent of the Union's involvement with tertiary journalism education in Australia. Bond University's experience is typical. The MEAA showed interest in the establishment of the Gold Coast
Bulletin program in 1990, and in the review and re-approval of the scheme a year later, but this surge of union interest was short-lived (Pearson 1995). The union was again involved in the inception of the unique work experience scheme initiated between the University of Queensland and the ABC, but again with no continuing involvement (Grundy 1995). With the exception of the Queensland University of Technology, where a MEAA State President taught part-time and a State Secretary had given the staff encouragement
(Cranato 1995), most Course Coordinators said the union took no active role in their courses. RMIT has a 'reasonable relationship' with the union, and has run short courses for it (Ricketson 1995). UTS, like a number of other courses. has been able to encourage union executives to give guest lectures from time
to time, and has been involved in joint research with it, through the ACIJ
(Bacon 1996). Comments on the MEAA and its relative lack of interest in
tertiary journalism courses ranged from 'support and encouragement'
(Granato 1995) to little love, some hate and we've never got on' (Stuart 1995),
to 'I see little they can do to help a course like ours' (Lloyd 1996).
The MEAA, in its earlier form, the AJA, had shown interest and been
involved in the establishment of the courses set up in the early-1970's (Stuart
1995), but appears to have lost interest in the 1990's. John Tebbutt invited
MEAA journalism division president Chris Warren to discuss the content of
the new course at Monash, but the MEAA senior executive showed no
interest. Warren accepted an invitation to address the JEA annual conference
in Brisbane in December, 1993, but was a 'no show'. Steve Stock well, in
charge of Australia's newest journalism course at Griffith University's Gold
Coast campus invited the local MEAA branch secretary to address students,
but he never arrived.
While the union sent a representative to the Course Advisory
Committee restructure deliberations at CSU in the mid-1980's, the only issue
pushed was the continued retention of shorthand. Shorthand was dropped in
that restructure and the Bathurst campus has seen little of Federal or State
MEAA executives since, save a couple of fleeting visits from industrial officers
on trips west of the Blue Mountains (Patching 1996). The MEAA seemed to
lose interest in tertiary journalism courses once it established its own training scheme with the major employers under the previously-mentioned JET
Committee.
Both Lawrie Apps (Curtin) and Roger Simms (Murdoch), however, specifically referred to the support they had received from the West Australian branch secretary of the MEAA, Chris Smyth, who has also been
active in trying to get the JEA and the MEAA into serious discussions about
accreditation. Equipment
Another of the issues raised in this section of the candidate's survey
related to equipment. What equipment did they have for print and broadcast
practical work and how did the university provide such equipment ? Was
there, for instance, a five-year purchasing plan considering the technology-
intensive nature of journalism, and the speed with which the technologies are
developing and converging, or was equipment bought on an ad hoc year by
year basis?
One of the common concerns to emerge from the survey was that the
various Course Coordinators have a constant battle with their respective
university administrations over the provision of adequate and up-to-date
equipment. Developments in technology are coming at such a pace that no
sooner has a decision been made to purchase than the information technology
people at the university or the computer software and hardware salespeople
say to wait: 'there's another generation of this or that just around the corner'.
While the cost of television, radio and print production equipment is coming
down, the relatively-large numbers of students taking practical journalism
subjects, and the rapid changes in, and convergence of, technology, are posing
problems for many Course Coordinators. A few years ago, the urgent
equipment need was for portable field television recording equipment with
courses keen to boast some form of ENG — electronic news gathering ~
equipment. In recent times it has been the need to go digital ~ in field and studio recording and editing equipment - for radio newsrooms. Upgrading print and broadcast production does not come cheap. Curtin University has spent $100,000 upgrading its print and broadcast equipment (Apps,
questionnaire revision 1996), and Deakin planned purchases totalling
$200,000 from early 1996 (Hurst 1995). Bond, with a relatively-small program,
spent $30,000 on equipment in 1995 (Pearson 1995). The Facilities Manager
for CSU's School of Communication, Peter Brady, says in the past four years
he's spent $650,000 upgrading equipment 'and the process is never ending'
{Artefact 1996). This equipment is not for the exclusive use of journalism
students, but they are the major users (Patching 1996).
Several courses (Bond, Canberra, Deakin, QUT, and Wollongong) are
planning to purchase digital audio editing equipment, and a few (CSU, Curtin
and RMIT) already have it. Most courses still use analog radio field recording
and editing equipment. The next step is to digital field recorders to
complement the digital editing systems. CSU bought 10 mini-disc systems
(self contained digital field record / editing devices) in 1996 for use by the
broadcast journalism and media production students {Artefact 1996) but they
have not been an outstanding success (Patching 1996).
Five of the courses take the print or broadcast version of the Australian
Associated Press (AAP) service ~ Bond, CSU, QUT, RMIT and Wollongong.
But it is not cheap. The cost to CSU's Communication School is $800 a month
(Patching 1996).
For print production, Pagemaker programs in various versions on
Apple Macs are the most popular. A few courses use Quark Express, which is popular in the print news industry. The University of Queensland is the largest 'odd man out', using Ventura for layout and Coral Draw for illustration for The Weekend Independent. In print production rooms around the country the problem is the
expense of providing enough computers with enough copies of the software
to cope with student demand.
None of the Coordinators felt their respective university
administrations had a three or five-year plan for purchasing equipment for
the journalism area. Almost invariably. Faculties, schools, departments or
divisions were invited to submit 'wish lists' each year, and equipment was
purchased on an ad hoc yearly basis after a Faculty or University-wide
competitive bidding process. Coping with the new technologies
As noted earlier, the problem of planning purchases is compounded by
the speed with which computer hardware and software is being developed.
Changes the Course Coordinators were making to cope with the so-called
'new technologies' or 'multi-media' are a subject of particular concern. In the
United States, mass media organisations are now being labelled 'information
companies' concerned with the collection, processing and dissemination of
information in various forms (Beecher 1990).
The former Director of the Australian Film, Television and Radio
School, and now Associate Professor in Communication at CSU, John O'Hara, says it is no longer simply good enough to be a writer or an editor or a director.
'Communication programs also have to adapt to new models of production, and one of the key areas is computer-generated technologies (like) desktop publishing, desktop video production. All these multi media technologies ... are now creating a demand for multi- skilling (O'Hara, 1996). The Editor of the MinneapoHs Star-Tribune on-line, Steve Yelvington,
put it more colourfully at a multi media conference in London in 1995:
'Newspapers, television and every other medium are going to wake up one morning and discover that they are (sic) all collided in some digital duststorm^ (Yelvington 1995).
Writing in the American media magazine Editor & Publisher, B.G.
Yovovich offered the following advice to journalism academics:
Teach students how to burrow into computer databases and extract information from online sources. Make sure they know their way around a spreadsheet. Teach them to design Web pages. Maybe even require fluency (in) hypertext markup language (HTML)\ (Yovovich 1996).
Not all journalism educators in the U.S. agree, especially Sandra
Davidson Scott in a recent edition of Journalism and Mass Communication
Educator:
'Journalism educators today cannot be expected to predict the state of media technology 30 years from now. Of course, while technology is changing, the fundamental tool of journalism remains largely the same -- the human mind' (Scott 1995).
San Jose Mercury News Managing Editor Jerry Ceppos agrees, saying
gathering the information is a lot more important than figuring out how to
adapt it to an online service.
T wouldn't worry about means of delivery ... it doesn't matter. I would teach students how to gather the information, how to analyse it and how to present it in an understandable way' (Ceppos, quoted in Case 1994).
The latest American survey on the attitudes of journalism educators and their students to the new technologies recommended that journalism educators recognise that new technologies are not the end of journalism. Students are going to be using new media and sooner rather than later so
they should consider the impact the technologies will have on their programs
(Singer et al 1996).
One of the most respected journalism programs in the United States -
Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism -- is spending $1.5 (US) million on
a newsroom of the future, calling it a 'multi-media content centre'. It has
created a Centre for New Media, and according to Phillip Keirstead in
International Broadcasting, 'specific-skills newsrooms are out, digital
infrastructuring is in'. (Keirstead 1996). One American academic took study
leave to study the effects of new technology on news and public relations
operations and whether it was changing the kinds of knowledge and skills
employers will be seeking in new employees. Among other things, he looked
into whether traditional courses should be dropped to include more computer
and graphic design courses (Neal 1996).
The candidate had thought when framing the question that the
interviewees would highlight approaches their courses were taking to teach
the 'how to' aspects of the new technologies ~ like desktop publishing, CD-
ROM production, digital audio and video editing and the various hardware
and software packages associated with the technologies. His view was
coloured by discussions within his own School about the need to change the
structure of the first-year subjects of the BA (Communication) to embrace
these ever-changing new technologies. CSU's Faculty of Arts Courses
Committee is considering two new subjects in the BA (Communication), one
to be taken by all five strands including about 50% desktop publishing
instruction and the other wholly concerned with video and audio production, primarily digital. Lynette Sheridan Burns of the University of Newcastle was the only interviewee to take the question to mean what new equipment was being purchased, saying her department and the Teacher Education and Design areas had made a joint submission to the University for $400,00 to establish a
15-computer multi-media laboratory (Sheridan Burns 1995). The majority interpreted the question as referring to how their courses were adapting to the applications of the new technology - primarily the World Wide Web or
Internet. Some, like Edith Cowan's Doug White, saw the Internet as having a major impact on what a journalist does, adding it is changing the way journalists gather material and disseminate it (White 1995). (As mentioned in the discussion of student productions earlier in the chapter, a number of courses are already using web sites on the Internet to showcase their students' work).
The most commonly-mentioned applications of the new technologies were computer assisted reporting (CAR), and having students use the Internet to research story exercises. Some of the respondents, like Griffith's Michael
Meadows, were concerned about legal and ethical issues and issues of intellectual property / copyright associated with digital technology and the
Internet (Meadows 1995). Others mentioned the problem of confirming accuracy with material freely available on the 'net. Given the current and predicted impact of the Internet, all Course Coordinators saw the need for their graduates to be 'Internet literate' before graduation.
The Monash program is taking Internet literacy a step further, with a specific subject in their second year titled Journalism Technology and the
Information Society to teach students the language of setting up Internet home pages (HTML), believing their students will need to be able to set up
Internet pages in the media of the 21st Century (Tebbutt 1996). Structural changes to courses aren't made overnight. It takes months of committee discussions at various levels before a new subject can be introduced into a curriculum. So while most of the courses have introduced the Internet as 'another newsgathering resource' for the student journalist to explore and master, many Course Coordinators and their school or departmental colleagues are still considering the long-term implications for their courses of the impact of the Internet. Accreditation
It is obvious from the discussion earlier in the chapter that opinions vary widely on content and structure, but do the Coordinators see any value in having some system of accreditation for the nation's journalism programs?
An accreditation system is in place in the United States and communication programs at 103 American colleges and Universities are accredited (AEJMC
News 1995). In the early-1990's, when 92 were accredited, the majority (72) were journalism programs (Davis 1991). The 1995 figure represents only about one in four of the communication programs in the U.S. (Beasley 1995).
The accrediting authority is the Accrediting Council on Education in
Journalism and Education and includes representatives of a broad range of media organisations, professional societies, journalism and mass communication educators and the public (ACEJMC 1993). In keeping with the American view that journalists should have a broad liberal arts education, undergraduates in accredited programs must take three-quarters of their coursework outside journalism. The most recent report of the AEJMC
Curriculum Task Force found overwhelming support for maintaining that requirement (Wolper 1995 and AEJMC Curriculum Task Force report 1996).
Programs must meet 12 standards of excellence in Governance /
Administration, budget, curriculum, student records and advising. internships and work experience, equipment and facilities, faculty scholarship, research and professional activities, public service, graduates / alumni, and minority and female representation (Beasley 1995). It would appear obvious from the relatively-low accreditation percentage that not every American journalism academic favours accreditation. Many believe, as do some of their counterparts in Australia, that the quality of their program is reflected in the quality of their graduates (Davis 1991). But as former
American journalism program head Len Granato commented, Australia doesn't have a comparable group of organisations to make an American-style accreditation process viable here (Granato 1995).
As had been noted earlier, accreditation has been tackled by journalism academics in Australia on and off for nearly 20 years without success. As one of the leaders in the debate in recent years, Chris Lawe-Davies notes, it is still a long way off (Lawe-Davies 1994). Only about a third (8) of the Course
Coordinators interviewed were in favour of some form of accreditation, but most had reservations about how it would be done, and by whom. Bond's
Mark Pearson has seen how the accreditation process has led to the provision of adequate resources in other discipline areas, and was in favour if that was the end result, but feared some universities might not want to invest the funds required to gain accreditation (Pearson 1995). Curtin's Lawrie Apps was in favour if it lead to consultation with existing courses before more courses were allowed to be established (Apps 1995). The others generally in favour of accreditation (representing Griffith - Brisbane, James Cook,
Murdoch, Southern Queensland, Swinburne and Wollongong) saw the main advantage in an accreditation system as providing a set of agreed minimum standards for programs. Some said it would force the MEAA and 'the industry' to look seriously at what was happening in the various courses, and Swinburne's Kitty Vigo thought it might work against what she sees as an
anti-academic attitude in the media industry (Vigo 1995). Other opinions
ranged from suspicion of accreditation (Granato 1995) to outright opposition.
(Bacon 1996). Bacon beheves the existing diversity of the media is best served
by the current diversity of courses and sees accreditation as possibly leading
to a breaking down of diversity by the establishment of a set of minimum
standards for courses (Bacon 1996). Edith Cowan's Doug White also
supports the existing diversity of courses, noting that journalism is changing
in focus, content and delivery and trying to prescribe what must be learned
was not, in his words 'a useful task' (White 1995).
'Journalism means so many things to so many people that attempts to prescribe what must be done in order to work as a journalist is almost an impossible task'. (White 1995).
John Hurst wanted his course at Deakin to remain unique and was
concerned about 'who would be telling who what to do?' (Hurst 1995). The
University of South Australia's Ian Richards fears that an accreditation
process could lead to the creation of a series of 'five star' courses and 'the
rest'. However, he saw value in a process that could lead to employers and
potential students knowing what to expect from the various courses (Richards
1995). Others would prefer to maintain their existing industry contacts and
rely on them to help their courses maintain standards (Bacon, Patching 1996).
The former Head of the Journalism Department at UQ, Bruce Grundy,
saw little future in the debate since 'the players can't agree on a set of criteria'
(Grundy 1995). His view may be influenced by the abortive attempts by
colleagues at his institution to get the JEA, MEAA and industry representatives into serious accreditation discussions, and their failure to get the JEA to adopt a series of criteria for accreditation and a set of 'exit competencies' (Lawe-Davies 1994 and University of Queensland documents
1992).
There was more agreement when the coordinators were asked who should be involved in any accreditation process. Most felt that journalism academics should be the driving force behind any accreditation process and should also include representatives of industry and the MEAA. But even here there was disagreement. Bond's Mark Pearson wanted it left it the hands of the educators only (Pearson 1995), James Cook's Steve Mcllwaine saw no role for the employers and Southern Queensland's Charles Stuart wanted no role at all for the MEAA:
'We don't tell them who to employ, why should they tell us how to do our job?' (Mcllwaine 1995).
'They (the MEAA) have shown next to no interest in what the various journalism schools are doing and only turn up on campuses looking for new members'. (Stuart 1995).
Although he thought it should be initiated by the MEAA, Monash's
John Tebbutt said he was not holding his breath:
'The MEAA is not geared for it, and the membership doesn't appear to support it'. (Tebbutt 1996).
Gail Sedorkin from Central Queensland University and Professor Clem
Lloyd from Wollongong University said their respective university administrations did not favour accreditation processes, so it wouldn't be happening for their courses (Sedorkin 1996 and Lloyd 1996).
Chapter 3 compares in detail the 22 courses surveyed. The main findings are:
• Debate continues in the wake of the Henningham model as to what
constitutes a journalism course with general agreement on the content, but
not on the size of the journalism component of the degree. • Australian journalism courses can be characterised into four groups: those
with 10 or more journalism subjects in their undergraduate degree
structure (there as six in this category); those with six or more journalism
subjects in their structure (11 programs qualify for this category); those
with less than six journalism subjects in an undergraduate degree (of which
there are three), and the two stand alone postgraduate programs.
• All undergraduate journalism programs have at least 20 subjects and the
majority have 24.
• The number of electives allowed in all but one course (the Murdoch
program has no electives) range from 18 to two, in some cases available
from anywhere in the University (and in some cases even from outside the
University) in other cases from a restricted number of discipline areas.
• Most of the programs have either a 60/40 or 50/50 split between theory
and practical subjects within the journalism component of their courses.
• Thirteen of the 22 courses have a journalism law subject; 11 have a separate
ethics subject; 11 (but not in all cases the same 11 that have an ethics
subject) have a research methods subject and only seven have a separate
subject on Australian politics.
• Charles Sturt University is the only course that offers either print or
broadcast journalism as a speciality. Currently their students can't do both.
• Journalism is clearly seen, administratively, as a humanities or liberal arts
discipline, with most of the undergraduate awards variation of a Bachelor
of Arts.
• More than half the courses (12) have a practical outlet for their radio
production, but the opportunities in television are, for obvious reasons,
limited. • Only two of the established courses (as opposed to the relatively-new
courses which in son^e cases have yet to have students in the final year of
their program) have a regular course print publication. They range from
the fortnightly Weekend Independent at the University of Queensland to
annual feature magazines, 'one-off publications to Internet newspapers
and magazines.
• Only a third (7) of the programs have compulsory work experience or
internship programs, while it is optional, but encouraged at the majority of
other courses.
• There's very little industry or union interest or support for the various
courses. While most employer groups will offer work experience to
students there is little interest in being involved in course development.
Only CSU and Bond enjoy any level of industry scholarship support for
their students.
• The courses have a constant battle with their respective university
administrations to provide enough equipment for the practical production
components of their courses and to keep that equipment at the cutting edge
of technology development.
• The courses are embracing the challenge of the new technologies in
different ways, but most have begun to introduce aspects of computer-
assisted reporting into their programs.
• Only a third (8) of the Course Coordinators are in favour of a form of
accreditation for journalism courses, while some others are strongly
opposed to it. Chapter 4
How many study journalism in Australia
and where do they find work?
The third section of the survey looked at how the various Course
Coordinators decided who to admit to their programs, enrolments figures, demand, drop-outs rates and the percentage of males and females in each course. It also sought the interviewees' opinions on the numbers graduating from journalism courses across the nation and where they found their respective graduates were currently getting jobs, and where they thought jobs might be in the future.
Communications courses in general, and journalism courses in particular, are very popular. Graham Williams described them as one of the l^ig glamour areas of university study' adding 'communications courses are winning on popularity hands down' {SMH, 10/1/96).
Aside from the courses that allow entry from anyone enrolled at the
University - like the Queensland and Deakin programs - and those in which the journalism subjects are part of a Media Studies major, all but four of the undergraduate journalism programs admit school leavers to their courses through their respective States' tertiary entrance ranking systems. Essentially those involved in the admission process work out how many offers they need to make to prospective applicants to meet their quota and make offers to the highest entrance rankings to reach that number. The common method for admitting other than high school leavers, mainly mature-age students, but possibly also including target minority groups like aboriginals and Torres
Strait Islanders, is to assess them on specific criteria like previous education. work and life experience. The four courses - at Bond, CSU, James Cook and
RMIT - that don't admit high school-leavers on tertiary entrance ranking alone, have additional admissions criteria, and all are very different.
In the United States, a recent survey showed that 86 of the respondent communication courses (36.4%) require a formal test of English writing skills as part of their program, and nearly half (41) require the test prior to admission (John et al 1991).
The most complex undergraduate admissions process in Australia is at the only private university with a journalism program. Bond, which has five separate criteria for admission (Pearson 1995). There is the Vice Chancellor's level of admission. Ten full-fee scholarships are offered each year to the highest-qualified applicants. They are short-listed and interviewed. Usually two will win awards to study journalism. There are half-fee scholarships, and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, which offers the journalism program, awards five or six such scholarships a year. They, too, are awarded on academic excellence, and again two usually go to journalism students.
Mention was made in the previous chapter of the third level of admission, the
Gold Coast Bulletin Cadet Scholarship program (which also involves half fee relief) and an average of two are awarded each year. Then there is the normal
University admission system, but if a student's Queensland OP score ~ the equivalent to the New South Wales Tertiary Entrance Ranking ~ is relatively low, suitable applicants may be given the opportunity to prove to the journalism staff by documentation and, in most cases, interview that they are worthy of being given a chance in the course.
The final group are given provisional admission. These are applicants who don't have the track record to suggest they will succeed at tertiary study but the journalism staff feel they should be given a chance. They are given non-degree enrolment in two of the core subjects in the journalism course, and if they achieve satisfactory results they are allowed to continue the course. The journalism staff and the respective students agree on what level of achievement is expected. According to the Course Coordinator at Bond, they are only risking one session with any of the successful applicants. If they start in the January semester, the journalism staff know by May whether they are likely to succeed. It leads to a broad mix of students from several high achievers to a few that some might feel have a slim chance of success (Pearson
1995).
Charles Sturt has a long history of not relying solely on a Tertiary
Entrance Ranking (or its interstate equivalents) for admission. The journalism strand is one of five in the BA (Communication) and all applicants are expected to complete a questionnaire aimed at assessing their commitment and background in any form of communication as well as completing one short essay, and in the case of journalism applicants (but not all other strands), two short essays. The essay questions usually first ask about what skills and attributes the applicants see as necessary for their chosen field of communication and then follow it with a question about how the applicants see the mass media of the future (Patching 1996). The essay questions are aimed not only at seeking the prospective students' views, but also to assess their literacy skills (Patching 1996).
One of the newer courses, James Cook, has special admission requirements involving the submission of three pieces of written work.
School leavers usually submit school essays, but mature-age applicants are advised to approach their local newspaper to get material published. All applicants are interviewed for about half and hour ~ the local applicants face- to-face, others by telephone. The Course Coordinator 'scores' each candidate on their written material and the interview, and offers places to the candidates with the highest scores (Mcllwaine 1995).
RMIT averages 1,500 - 2,000 applicants for the 50 places in the course.
About half receive an acceptable VCE score (tertiary entrance score) and they are required to sit an entrance exam which tests grammar, word usage, comprehension and includes a general news quiz. They also fill out a detailed application form. The top 150 - 180 are interviewed, with enough offered a place to fill the quota of 50 (Ricketson 1995). Too many students and too many graduates?
A clouded area since the explosion in journalism courses with the development of the former Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE) sector in the early 70's, and more particularly since the 'mini explosion' of new courses in the 90's, has been how many students are studying at, and graduating from, vocational journalism courses around the country.
Add to that collective figure those who do a few journalism subjects in one of the larger programs and can claim to have taken as many journalism subjects as graduates from some of the smaller programs; those who study journalism at private colleges and those who graduate from the various
University communications and media studies courses, or graduate from a particular discipline like politics or economics with a view to becoming a journalist, and the figure would be much higher.
The latest research shows that 18% of Australia's journalists are graduates from journalism schools, while almost as many (17%) have a degree from a different discipline. By comparison, in the United States, 82% of journalists have a degree, and seven out of eight new employees are graduates of a journalism school (Henningham 1995). The aim of this section of the survey was to find out how many students would graduate from the various University journalism courses in
1995 into what is a shrinking mainstream media job market. A contributor to the American Internet discussion group 'journef has suggested that while in the 70's when journalism was still riding high from Watergate, a half to two- thirds of his students wanted careers in print or broadcast journalism, more recently, less than 10 percent showed any real interest in the traditional journalism careers. More likely, he said, they were interested in entering the corporate sector (Steffen 1996).
While many of the Australian journalism coordinators interviewed during the candidate's fieldwork said they are always at pains to ensure students do not have unrealistic expectations of their job prospects, anecdotal evidence suggests that while journalism students realise not all graduates will get media-related jobs, let alone one in the mainstream media, almost all believe they will be one of the lucky ones.
Lecturers can talk themselves hoarse about the relatively-limited opportunities in mainstream media nowadays (citing the staffing cuts expected in the ABC, and the late October, 1996, 'downsizing' at the Seven
Network which saw journalist job losses), but many graduates from journalism programs believe they have a ^better than average' chance of picking up one of the limited mainstream jobs. At least 20 of the 35 students who completed CSU's BA (Communication) Broadcast Journalism strand in
1995 believed they should be considered in the 'Top 10' in the class and would at least get a position on a regional radio or television station. That proved not the case.
One guide to vocational outcomes has been the figures supplied to the
JEA. At the JEA Annual Conferences in the late 70's and early 80's, lecturers from the various courses presented their admissions and expected graduation figures for the particular year, and they were entered into the minutes of that Annual General Meeting. Unfortunately, the statistics were never complete as some institutions' representatives didn't know the figures or weren't prepared to release them, and other institutions were not represented. JEA minutes from 1979 until the 'show and tell' practice was abandoned in the mid-80's, highlight the trend of the increasing popularity of journalism courses leading to increased quotas or intakes and more courses.
While intakes have tended to remain steady at most courses over the past five years, some report getting extra students when other courses at their university can't fill their quota. CSU had a quota into the five communication streams in recent years of 150 - 160, with an average of 80 - 90 taking either print or broadcast journalism. Invariably they over-enrol, up to 180+, to counter under-enrolment in other courses (Patching 1996). Another course asked to 'take up the slack' of under-enrolments elsewhere is journalism at
Southern Queensland. For instance, in 1987 the quota was 50, and they took
194 (Stuart 1995). Edith Cowan has seen a steady increase in their media studies major (which includes the three journalism subjects) from 110 in 1993, to 130 in 1994 and 150 in 1995. Media Studies is the second largest growth area for students at Edith Cowan after Sports Science (White 1995).
Newcastle has a nominal journalism quota of 90, but almost always enrol more. In 1994,132 were enrolled (Sheridan Burns 1995). The
University of Queensland has seen a gradual rise from about 290 in the early
80's to the 1995 enrolment of 400 in first year (Grundy 1995). Deakin, too, has seen steady increases, but would like to see a quota for entry into second year.
A quota on first year journalism entry is resisted by the Faculty of Arts Administration because 'a reduction in journalism numbers in that year could easily lead to a loss of enrolments in other subject areas' (Hurst 1995).
As an example of the early trend, the Deakin and Queensland programs have been further researched. In 1979, Deakin enrolled 105 and graduated 20 while the University of Queensland enrolled 280 and graduated
40. Two years later, Deakin enrolled 200 having graduated 20 in 1980, while
Queensland enrolled 280 having graduated 40 in the previous year. By 1984,
Deakin was enrolling 150 and graduating about 15, and while the admission figure was unavailable, the University of Queensland graduated 20 that year.
Both Deakin and Queensland take large numbers into their first years and many drop out during or at the end of the first year. Both Universities allow students from all disciplines to take journalism subjects, and some drop out because they fail, don't like journalism or find it too demanding. Others take only a couple of subjects as electives in another degree. Deakin has a large distance education cohort.
Stuart reproduced figures on the numbers of students graduating from journalism courses from 1974 - 89, but again they are incomplete. Figures for four of the institutions ~ Deakin, RMIT, Queensland and the South Australian
Colleges of Advanced Education (now USA) ~ were either unavailable, or only partly available. The most complete figures are from 1988 and 1989, and cover seven institutions - Canberra CAE (now University of Canberra),
RMIT, Mitchell CAE (now CSU), the Western Australian Institute of
Technology (now Curtin), the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced
Education (now USQ), the New South Wales Institute of Technology (now
UTS) and Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education (now Central
Queensland). In 1988 and '89, the seven institutions graduated 152 and 156 journalism students respectively (Stuart, 1996). By comparison, in 1995 those same seven institutions graduated more than twice as many -- a total of 332.
Malloy's 1989 survey covered all tertiary communications courses in
Australia, a total of 33 institutions. He concluded that more than 26,750 students were undertaking communications courses at Australian tertiary institutions (Malloy 1991). He also found more than 3,000 students were studying journalism at Bachelor level, mostly in Victoria and Queensland.
He predicted an oversupply of journalism graduates in the following three years. In his list of institutions teaching journalism, Malloy included five not represented in the current survey - Macquarie University, Ballarat CAE, La
Trobe University, Victoria College - Rusden and Warrnambool lAE. These were not included either because they are not vocation-based courses, or the institutions had been absorbed into new tertiary consortiums in the round of tertiary amalgamations of the late 80's. On Malloy's figures, 3,083 studied journalism in 1989. The enrolments at three of these institutions were unavailable, but reducing the figure by the enrolments of the other two (125) that meant there were still nearly 3,000 enrolled in tertiary journalism courses in 1989 (Malloy 1991).
Table 7 demonstrates that the growth in the number of courses, and more particularly in their enrolments and numbers of graduates, has continued in a decade when the number of jobs in the mainstream media until the early 90's initially rose and then dropped in recent years.
Through the 80's CSU, like most other courses, could claim that up to three-quarters of their journalism students had media-related jobs by
Graduation Day. In contemporary circumstances, it is unlikely that more than half would be working for a newspaper, magazine, radio or television newsroom by the time they returned to graduate. TABLE 7
COURSES BY 1995 INTAKE AND GRADUATE FIGURES
INSTITUTION 1995 INTAKE 1995 GRADUATES Bond 40 8 Canberra 50 40 Central Queensland 90 25 Charles Sturt 90 90 Curtin 185 40 Deakin 462 90 Edith Cowan 150 50
Griffith (Brisbane) 60 —
Griffith (Gold Coast) —
James Cook 50 —
Monash 50 — Murdoch 30 25 Newcastle 132 25 Queensland 400 60 QUT 60 60 RMIT 50 45 Sth Australia 50 35 Sthn Queensland 55 32 Swinburne 120 60 UTS"^ 75 60 UWS 95 85 Wollongong 28 15
TOTALS: 2,322 845 ^includes postgraduate and undergraduate figures
By way of comparison, 431 Colleges and Universities in the United
States have a total journalism and mass communication enrolment of about
130,000 (Beasley 1995) and in 1994 graduated about 37,000 (AEfMC News
1995). In the past few years some journalism programs in the United States have been eliminated, and others reduced and / or combined with other communication programs. Among the reasons given have been that the programs have become too costly or too vocational in nature for their respective Universities (Beasley 1995) and at the other end of the scale, were not delivering enough media jobs to their graduates (Lloyd 1995). The last
reason bears emphasis in the climate of Department of Employment,
Education and Training (DEET) Quality Assurance Reviews and the
Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (under
the Howard Government elected in March, 1996) demands for graduate and
other statistics.
Several of the Journalism Coordinators interviewed for this survey said
their Vice Chancellors (or Senior Faculty or University Administrators) are
considering changing courses -- not only journalism courses -- (and some
have already made changes) to make them more acceptable to industry so
their graduates stand a better chance of getting jobs. University
Administrations are becoming more concerned about the number of relevant
jobs their graduates are getting.
Table 7 shows that 845 students completed journalism studies of
varying lengths at 18 journalism courses in Australia in 1995. Broken down
state by state, it shows New South Wales with five courses graduating 275,
Queensland with eight courses (but only five with students completing last
year) graduating 185, Victoria with three courses graduating 195 (and one
course yet to provide a graduate). Western Australia's three courses
graduating 115, South Australia's one journalism course contributing 35
graduates and the single ACT course another 40. Gender balance in courses
Women now far outnumber men in Australian tertiary courses. The
latest figures indicate women represent 55% of students and outnumber their
male counterparts by 50,000 (Campus Review 1/7/96). Journalism Course
Coordinators said females outnumber males by at least two to one in most journalism courses, some putting the figure at more than four to one. In the United States, female enrolment is put at about 60% (Beasley 1995).
Anecdotal evidence and the sheer weight of numbers suggests that women
are beginning to dominate in newsrooms. Terry Plane, the former Network
News Director for the Seven Network, highlighted the rapid rise of women in
television news and current affairs. He gave several reasons for the trend
(the ABCs equal opportunity schemes which widened opportunities for
women and the dominance of women in the Seven network's Today Tonight
current affairs program) but most interestingly:
the preponderance of young women in Australian journalism schools, a trend which quickly took hold once journalism training switched from on-the-spot cadetships to tertiary institutions ... in the mid to late 80's' (Plane 1996).
According to Plane, women from tertiary journalism schools are
knocking on newsroom doors in a ratio of about 6:1 compared to young men
(Plane 1996).
The highest percentage of female journalism students is at the
University of Canberra, which estimates it at 85% (Bilboe 1995). CSU, James
Cook, Newcastle, RMIT and UTS estimate their classes are 80% female. At
the other end of the scale, the lowest percentages of female students are found
at one West Australian and two Victorian courses. Edith Cowan's journalism
cohort is roughly 50/50, while Swinburne estimate 55% female (Vigo 1995)
and Deakin 60% female (Hurst 1995). Western Sydney and Monash estimate
65% female journalism students (Rose 1995 and Tebbutt 1996). Central
Queensland has about 66% female students (Sedorkin 1996). The rest put the
figure at more than 70%.
If the average female / male ratio is two to one, that means about 560
female and roughly 280 male graduates joined the journalism job market in
November, 1995. If four to one is closer to the mark the figures become about 670 women and roughly 170 men. The precise figures lie somewhere in between.
The graduation figures, with the exception of the University of
Technology Sydney, represent only graduates from undergraduate
journalism programs and the two programs (Murdoch and Wollongong) with
only postgraduate journalism courses. The UTS graduates' figure (60)
represents roughly 35 undergraduates and 25 from the postgraduate
program. The figures represent only approximate numbers as in most cases
the precise figures were not available since at the time of the candidate's
interviews most of the courses had not completed their academic year, and
the number was a well-educated guess. If a smattering of graduates from the
various postgraduate programs (and excluding the research programs)
attached to the larger undergraduate schools is added, the realistic figure is
close to 900.
Add to that the enrolments in the four courses yet to graduate a
student, and expected modest increases in some of the existing programs, and
by the end of 1998, Australia's 22 journalism programs will be graduating
more than 1,000 students a year. Enrolments
How many students were enrolled in journalism programs at the
beginning of 1995? From the candidate's survey, about 2,322. The two
biggest programs, at Deakin and Queensland Universities, had already
experienced substantial drop-outs by the end of the first semester. Deakin
had dropped from 230 enrolments on campus and 232 off campus to 216 in
Geelong and a bigger drop-out (down to 152) among distance education
students and those taking journalism at the Warrnambool campus. The
University of Queensland lost 150 of their 400-strong intake between first and second semesters. As Table 7 shows, no other vocational journalism program came close to half the University of Queensland intake of 400. The third highest intake was 185 at Curtin, followed by 150 in the Edith Cowan program, 132 at Newcastle and 120 at Swinburne. The rest have less than a hundred. About two-thirds of the programs (13) had intakes in 1995 of between 40 and 90.
But even erring on the conservative side (and allowing for dropouts for various reasons) adding about 1500 students taking journalism in each of the second and third years of the various undergraduate programs, and adding a few for those doing postgraduate programs or continuing their journalism studies by distance education or part-time, more than 5,000 students were taking vocation-based journalism at Australian universities in 1995. Drop-out rates
With so many taking vocational journalism courses, what is the overall drop-out rate? The candidate has already mentioned the big drop-out rates at
Queensland and Deakin and both are partly explained by their 'open door' policy of taking anyone in their respective Universities that wants to take two or three journalism subjects as part of another course ~ the same number of journalism subjects in the three smaller courses. Some also drop out through failure or not liking the course (Grundy 1995).
But the majority of courses, with strict quotas on entry, and relatively- high admission requirements have low drop-out rates. (UTS had a TER cut- off in 1996 of 96, the highest in the University, and close to what's required to do law or medicine at other Sydney Universities - Bacon 1996). As Matthew
Ricketson, then Acting Journalism Course Coordinator at RMIT, which is highly selective, noted: 'once they have jumped all the hoops to get in, they tend to stay' (Ricketson 1995).
The University of Southern Queensland has found that about 47% of
those who start the course finish it. About 20% drop out, the rest switch to
other studies (Stuart 1995:1). James Cook found their drop-out rate between
the first and second semesters in the first year of their course (1995) was
nearly 19% (Mcllwaine 1995). Most of the coordinators put their drop-out
rates at about 5% or less. How many jobs are there?
With so many students graduating each year, where are the jobs?
While most of the Course Coordinators believe most of their graduates get
jobs (very few kept accurate records of their graduates' destinations but drew
on anecdotal evidence), few suggested the majority got media-related jobs, let
alone jobs in the mainstream media.
Trying to get an accurate idea of how many entry-level jobs there are
for journalists each year is not easy. The various journalism Course
Coordinators around the country either didn't want to venture a guess or had
a 'gut feeling' that it was a couple of hundred across Australia. Stuart was the
only one prepared to volunteer a firm figure ~ between 300 and 350 entry-
level jobs a year (Stuart 1995:1).
DEETYA surveys occupations where there are perceived workforce
shortages, but according to John Turnbull of the Occupational Analysis
Branch in DEETYA's Sydney offices, that's not the case in journalism. He says there's been an oversupply for some years, so they don't survey the area. Late in 1995 the Federal Government released a report titled Australia's Workforce
2005: Jobs in the future which said that while jobs in the communication industries dropped 1.5% between 1986-94, it predicted they would rise by
3.3% between 1994-2005. (Riley 1995). The Graduate Careers Council of Australia produces a national survey of graduate destinations which throws some light on how many graduates have got jobs by the end of April of the year following the completion of their
course. In 1992,67.5% of all graduates responded to the survey. In the sub-
category of Communication and Journalism under the general heading of Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences, almost 45% of the 842 respondents had found full-time employment ~ 8.4% in government jobs, and 31% in private
industry. The category of Communication and Journalism includes all courses
loosely labelled 'communication'. In that same year, 7% of the 1,525
Humanities graduates who responded to the survey ~ a total 107 ~ listed
their job as 'journalism' {Graduate Destination Survey 1992).
In the following year (from a response rate of 65%), of the total of 938
respondents in the Communication and Journalism category, 40.6% were in full-
time work, 8% in government jobs, and 29.9% in private industry. Of the
1,617 Humanities graduates who responded, 9% (or 146) reported they were working as journalists or authors (Graduate Destination Survey 1993 ).
The 1995 survey (of 1994 graduates) had a response rate of 62.2%. In the Communication and Journalism category, from a total number of respondents of 1,003, 43.8% has found employment by the end of April, 1995,
8.4% in various government positions, and 29.8% in private industry. Of the
1,737 Humanities graduates who responded, 8.6% put themselves in the category of journalist or author, a total of 149 (Graduate Destination Survey
1994).
The latest survey (of 1995 graduates) had an overall response rate of
66.8%. In the category now labelled Communications & Journalism, in the Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences section, from a total of 1,181 respondents, 8% had found government jobs and 31.9% were employed in private industry. Allowing for another 4.4% either involved in education-related jobs or what was termed 'other full-time employment', a total of 44.2% were in full-time employment. Among 2,212 Humanities graduates, 6.7% or 148 nominated
themselves as a journalist or author. {Graduate Destination Survey 1995).
Thus, in 1992-95, the number of graduates who responded to the
survey and had found jobs in journalism was virtually unchanged.
Bruce Guthrie, a former Careers Adviser at Sydney University,
coordinates the production of the annual surveys from Mandurama, west of
Bathurst. The figures include either all Humanities students who responded,
or all those who took a communication course of some description. He says
thaf s as close as his figures come to narrowing the national picture down to
how many journalism jobs University graduates got in each of the four years
quoted.
Over many years of talking to high school and first-year University
students, those who say they want to be journalists ~ and from his experience
there were plenty of them ~ had what he called 'an unhelpfully narrow idea
of what constituted journalism, and what a journalist did' (Guthrie,
29/11/95).
Mike Sutherland, an Assistant Federal Secretary of the MEAA
estimated there would be somewhere between 200 and 300 entry-level jobs for
1995 graduates. (Sutherland, 1995). At best that's three graduates for each journalism job.
The Western Australian Secretary of the Alliance, Chris Smyth, said
there are about 10,000 people on the Alliance's journalism 'books'. Of those,
about 6,000 work in the media, 2,000 are freelancers, and the remaining 2,000 are either in public relations or on the 'unattached' list. He said in general, journalists are staying in their jobs longer, but in the lower grades, the traditional movement of young journalists wanting to travel continues. In Western Australia, at least, and he believed the trend was nationwide, the Perth media are taking only graduates, but not necessarily only journalism graduates, but in country and suburban media, almost totally journalism graduates are taken (Smyth 1995). The job market
Most journalism educators acknowledged that the majority of their graduates wanted to work in the mainstream media, but agreed many would have to take other jobs while they waited for their opportunity on a mainstream newspaper, magazine, radio or television station. Most said the best of their students ended up in the mainstream media ~ many after working for a suburban throwaway, or a small country newspaper, radio or TV station initially. Only the 'best of the best' ended up in the plumb jobs in the capital city media outlets. So where are the jobs emerging, since the traditional employers graduates have relied on for so long seem not to be taking as many at entry level in recent years? Most of the interviewees noted the explosion in desktop publishing as giving many of their graduates the opportunity to produce boutique publications - small magazines, newsletters and the like -- as their first job. At Edith Cowan University in Perth, for instance, realising the competition for mainstream jobs from graduates of the long-established Curtin program and Murdoch's Graduate Diploma, Journalism Coordinator Doug White emphasises to his students the niche market of newsletter production. In the final year of Edith Cowan's course each student produces a four-page newsletter for a real client. Some end up getting a part-time job continuing to produce the newsletter for that client. Often it leads to offers to produce newsletters from other associated organisations or groups, or the students find more clients for themselves. Also, because of the relatively small number of journalism subjects in the Edith Cowan course (three journalism subjects combined with other media subjects to make the equivalent of a minor), students tend to take other subjects in media-related areas like radio and television production and / or public relations. This combination opens up wider job opportunities for a media 'generalise (White 1995). Such is the
case in a number of other courses, too.
Because of the number of journalism courses in Queensland - and
south-east Queensland in particular ~ Michael Meadows, who coordinates
one of the newest courses at Griffith University's Brisbane campus, says he
won't be pushing mainstream media jobs as a serious option for the majority
of his students. The first graduates from the course at the suburban Nathan
campus will finish in 1997, and chances are. Meadows said, they won't end up
in mainstream media jobs (Meadows 1995).
Like many of his fellow Journalism Coordinators across the country.
Meadows said many students do journalism as a 'stepping stone' to other
jobs. He said they have a distinct advantage over other Arts graduates
because of their critical thinking skills and their advanced writing and
evaluation skills (Meadows 1995). Matthew Ricketson, of RMIT, said one
employer. Information Australia, which produces books and newsletters, had
taken five or six RMIT graduates in 1993-94 to write and edit boutique
newsletters (Ricketson 1995). A number of the coordinators said their recent
graduates have been getting jobs in public relations and promotions. In most
cases, their courses were structured so they could take a number of subjects in
public relations and have a 'second string to their bow'.
Wendy Bacon from UTS said the ABC, SBS and Fairfax still take UTS graduates (especially postgraduates), but she'd noticed a trend recently of undergraduates going on to postgraduate study (especially the Law course at
the University of New South Wales), or to work on trade journals, in public
relations, or on alternative publications and in newsletter production (Bacon
1996). The view of some of the coordinators is reflected in the comment of
the former Queensland University of Technology Journalism Coordinator,
Len Granato, who said he was not in the employment business:
'While I am as proud as hell when they do well, I am here to educate them in the hope they will improve the state of journalism' (Granato 1995).
Queensland University's Bruce Grundy, estimates that only half to
three-quarters of those who make it to the final year of their program are
serious about working in the mainstream media:
'If they really mean to get a job (in the mainstream media) at the end of their journalism studies, they will' (Grundy 1995).
He's noticed graduates ending up in research jobs, marketing, and
even as politicians. John Hurst, former Journalism Coordinator at Deakin
University, said some of his graduates also end up in public relations, and
some in the 'elite' area of PR for Parliamentarians (Hurst 1995).
The survey also asked whether the various journalism coordinators
were worried about the numbers studying journalism across the country.
While many of the coordinators were confident the majority of their graduates
who wanted jobs in mainstream media would eventually get them, some
were worried by the large numbers studying journalism in Australia. Curtin
University's Lawrie Apps said bluntly:
There are too many students in journalism in Australia' (Apps 1996).
At the other end of the scale is Steve Mcllwaine, who coordinates another of the newer journalism courses in Australia -- at James Cook in Townsville. His course took its first 50 students in 1995. The numbers nationally don't worry him at all:
'Journalism graduates are excellent material for a range of areas. Their employment rates are significantly higher than general Arts graduates' (Mcllwaine 1995).
Newcastle University's Lynette Sheridan Burns said she's concerned that so many of the country's journalism students kid themselves with the unrealistic expectation that they will get a job in the mainstream media.
This section of the survey looked at how many students are studying journalism across Australia, how many graduate and where they are finding jobs. The major findings were:
• Only four courses -- Bond, CSU, James Cook and RMIT -- have special
admissions criteria for their journalism programs.
• There's high demand for journalism courses.
• While 845 students completed journalism programs in 1995, nearly three
times as many (2,322) started courses.
• Women far outnumber men in Australia's journalism programs.
• It's estimated Australia's 22 journalism programs will be graduating about
1,000 students per year by the end of 1998.
• Aside from large drop-out rates for the Deakin distance education course,
and at the University of Queensland where the majority take only a few
journalism subjects, most of the other courses enjoy low drop-out rates.
• The best estimate is that there are about 300 mainstream media jobs for
three times as many graduates from Australia's vocational journalism
courses.
• Journalism graduates (aside from mainstream media employment) are
finding jobs in research, magazine and journal production and in the
boutique newsletter market. • There appears little concern among Course Coordinators about the high
numbers taking journalism across the country and the relatively-small
number of mainstream media jobs. Chapter 5
Who are the
teachers?
The final section of the survey sought staffing details at the 22 programs - who was teaching journalism there at the time of the survey, what were their media and academic backgrounds, what had they been
TABLE 8
TEACHING STAFF BY GENDER JUNE 1995 TO SEPTEMBER 1996
INSTITUTION MALE FEMALE PART-TIME STAFF TOTAL Bond 2 0 1.5 3.5 Canberra 1 2 0 3 Central Qld 0 3 0 3 CSU 2.5 1.5 1 5 Curtin 3 1 1 5 Deakin 2 2 2 6 Edith Cowan 1 1 0 2 Griffith (Brisbane) 1 0 0 1 Griffith (Gold Coast) 2 0 0 2 James Cook 2 0 0 2 Monash 2 1 0 3 Murdoch 1 1 0 2 Newcastle 1 1 0 2 Queensland 6 3 0 9 QUI 4 2 0 6 RMIT 2 4 1 7 Sth Australia 3 0 1 4 Sthn Qld 2 1 0 3 Swinburne 0 1 0 1 UTS 2 3 2.5 7.5
UWS 1 1 - 2 Wollongong 3 0 0 3
TOTALS: 43.5 28.5 10 82 involved in by way of publications, consultancies or committee work outside
the university in the past five years, and what was their workload?
Table 8 is a snapshot of the staffing at each of the vocational journalism
programs across the country. It is a wide time-line snapshot of the national
picture, since the interviews were taken over a 15-month period. In one
instance ~ James Cook ~ there was only one journalism staff member at the
time of the candidate's visits, but subsequently another appointment was
made. In another case, Curtin, an additional appointment was also made
after the survey.
Table 8 shows that a total of 82 full and part-time staff were involved in
teaching the journalism components of the 22 courses in Australia, an average
of 3.72 per course. But as has been seen in earlier discussion, such an average
figure is virtually meaningless given the size range (in both student intake
and number of journalism subjects) of the courses. The figures do not include
former journalists teaching in the general communication theory area or in
media studies programs at the various institutions. It excludes journalists
turned academics like Julianne Schultz (QUT), Neville Peterson (UWS) and
Myles Breen and Warwick Blood (CSU) because they do not teach practical
journalism or exclusively journalism theory.
While many of the Course Coordinators noted they enjoyed some part-
time assistance for tutorials, workshops, demonstrating or marking, a part-
time figure was only included in the staffing table where people were on
fractional appointments, or several part-time staff added up to the equivalent
of one or more full-time positions. An example of both instances is at UTS,
where there is a half-time fractional appointment, but the other two part-time
positions involve five people in varying degrees. At CSU, there were two full-
time staff who spend roughly half their time teaching journalism students. one in television journalism and one in print journalism. Also, there are several part-timers, who collectively equal one staff member. In 1997, for the first time, CSU utilised a full-time Radio Newsroom Supervisor / News
Editor. Previously the position had been a fixed-term appointment for up to
40 weeks a year. In late 1996, Curtin was seeking to recruit a person to be
half-time 6NR News Editor and half-time journalism lecturer.
Table 9 also shows that of the 72 full-time journalism teaching staff
around the country, 60% are male, and 40% female ~ almost the reverse of
their female-dominated classrooms. Of the equivalent of 82 full-time staff,
12% are part-timers, and 88% full-time. Anecdotal evidence suggests that
while the overall full-time equivalent figure is 82, there are probably about
100 people involved in teaching, tutoring, demonstrating or marking in
Australian tertiary journalism courses. All but one of the biggest five
journalism programs from the standpoint of staff are capital city-based ~ two
in Brisbane (Queensland and QUT), one each in Sydney (UTS) and Melbourne
(RMIT) and one in regional Victoria (Deakin). And they include the courses
with the two highest first year intakes (Queensland and Deakin).
The biggest journalism staff is at the University of Queensland with a
total of nine full-time lecturers. But only four are tenured, another four are on one-year contracts, and another is on a six-month contract. The staff size is understandable considering the 1995 first year intake was 400, and the number of subjects offered in the compulsory and journalism elective parts of the degree (see discussion later). The second-largest staff is at the UTS program ~ the equivalent, including one half-time position and a number of part-timers of 7.5 staff.
RMIT has seven staff, followed by QUT and Deakin University with the equivalent of six lecturers each. At the other end of the scale, two programs had only one staff member
(at the time of writing) -- Griffith's Brisbane course, and the Swinburne
program. Griffith advertised for another lecturer in late 1996 (Meadows
1996). Swinburne has only one lecturer because there are only two
journalism subjects in the Media Studies program - one per semester.
There are five programs with only two journalism staff. They are Edith
Cowan (1995 first year intake 150; three journalism subjects); Griffith
University (Gold Coast) which had an inaugural intake in 1996 of 25, to rise to
50 in 1997 (six journalism subjects); James Cook (1995 inaugural intake 50 and
12 journalism subjects spread over three years); Newcastle (1995 intake of 132
taking seven journalism subjects); and Western Sydney (with an enrolment
last year of 95 and a program of three journalism subjects).
The 'hard luck' story in staffing terms from these figures is the
Newcastle program. The low staff numbers are understandable at Edith
Cowan and UWS because of the relatively low number of journalism subjects
in the respective programs, and the other two courses with low staffing --
Griffith (Gold Coast) and James Cook -- did not have a group in the final year of their program at the time of the candidate's survey. For James Cook that comes in 1997, and for Griffith (Gold Coast) in 1998. But Newcastle has only two staff members to teach seven journalism subjects to intakes of up to 132.
The quota for 1995 was 90, and 100 for 1996 (Sheridan Burns 1995).
There are too many variables -- like tutorial assistance given lecturers with large core journalism subject enrolments, the overall size of the program, whether the journalism program is a major, minor, or a possible few electives, and the huge variation in intakes -- to make any valid comparison between staff numbers and student intakes. Newcastle, with two staff, and 132 students in first year in 1995, however, had a staff to student ratio of 1:66. Ignoring the smaller programs, like Edith Cowan, Swinburne and UWS
(small in the sense of only two or three journalism subjects in their program),
and allowing for about half of Deakin's intake off-campus, and therefore only
considered the equivalent of half a full-time place as distance education
students, Newcastle comes off worst of all the 'major' courses in this simple
comparison.
At the other end of the course, if staff per graduate is compared,
Newcastle is one of only four undergraduate courses with more than six
journalism subjects (the candidate's group 2) that has a staff / graduate ratio
in excess of 10. With 25 graduates last year, Newcastle has a staff / graduate
ratio of 1:12.5. The other high ratio courses with journalism majors are
Canberra (1:13.3), Deakin (1:15) and Southern Queensland (1:10.6). Precise
figures for each of the three years of each of the 20 undergraduate courses
would be needed to make any valid comparison, but the comparison is
worthy of mention.
In an attempt to devise a more valid method of comparing the staffing
at the various courses, staff numbers were compared with the number of
journalism subjects (including options or electives) taught by the staff in the
respective courses. Comparing the level of staffing per subject at each
institution is a quite separate issue to the individual lecturer's workload. In
table 9, the number of journalism subjects offered by the journalism school or
department was divided by the number of staff to arrive at the comparative
ratio in the third column of the table. In seven cases ~ Canberra, CSU,
Curtin, Queensland, RMIT, UTS and Wollongong ~ the number of journalism
subjects is different from the number in the course structure. At all but CSU, this is because there are either options within the core journalism area, or journalism electives are offered in the course. At CSU, there are five TABLE 9
COURSES BY STAFF AND NUMBER AND RATIO OF JOURNALISM SUBJECTS
INSTITUTION STAFF JOURNALISM RATIO SUBJECTS Bond 3.5 6 1 :1.7 Canberra 3 10 1 :3.3 Central Qld 3 6 1 :2.0 CSU 5 15 1 :3.0 Curtin 5 13 1 :2.6 Deakin 6 8 1 :1.3 Edith Cowan 2 3 1:1.5 Griffith (Brisbane) 1 6 1 :6.0 Griffith (Gold Coast) 2 6 1 :3.0 James Cook 2 12 1 :6.0 Monash 3 6 1 :2.0 Murdoch 2 5 1 :2.5 Newcastle 2 7 1 :3.5 Queensland 9 24 1 :2.7 QUT 6 14 1 :2.3 RMIT 7 14 1 :2.0 Sth Australia 4 12 1 :3.0 Sthn Qld 3 7 1 :2.3 Swinburne 1 2 1 :2.0 UTS 7.5 13 1 : 1.7 UWS 2 3 1 : 1.5 Wollongong 3 14 1 :4.6
specialist print journalism subjects and five specialist broadcast journalism subjects, and five common to both strands. So w^hile the individual student takes 10 journalism subjects, the staff teach a total of 15 (Patching 1996). The table shows that with three exceptions - Griffith's Brisbane campus, James
Cook and Wollongong - each staff member is responsible for between 1.3 and
3.5 subjects per course and per year. But even this simple comparison shows that staff at some institutions are responsible for nearly three times' as many subjects as their colleagues at other institutions. The figures don't take into consideration subjects staff might teach in higher degrees, or as 'service subjects' for other disciplines, or administrative, marking or higher degree supervision loads. The figures also don't take into consideration the numbers of students in the various subjects.
The skewed figures for Griffith and James Cook are explained by the fact that Griffith's Brisbane campus (as noted above) had, as of November,
1996, to appoint a second journalism lecturer (which would reduce their ratio to 1:3.0). An additional member of staff at James Cook would lower their ratio to 1:4, which would still make it the highest of the undergraduate programs.
Wollongong's high ratio is explained by the fact that their MA contains five compulsory journalism subjects, and students in the 18-month program take seven electives from a nominal choice of 18, but as the Wollongong
Handbook notes, not all subjects are offered each year (Handbook 1996).
Usually 10 of the 18 electives are offered each year, producing a staff / subject ratio of 1:5. The ratio is high, but the annual intake (28 in 1995) is the lowest in the country, primarily because it is a postgraduate course and also has 16 research students. One or two compulsory subjects with an average enrolment of 28, and two or three electives with an average enrolment of 14 (if the students are evenly spread across a possible 10 electives), leaves each lecturer notionally responsible for between 70 and 84 students in various stages of the course. Industry experience
Only four of the 82 people teaching journalism in Australia -- or 4.9% - lack experience in the mass media. In two cases - CSU and Queensland - it was because the staff member, or part-timers who made up the equivalent of the position, were graduates who got teaching jobs. The other two were employed in courses on the Gold Coast. At the nation's newest course ~ at
Griffith on the Gold Coast - journalism lecturer, Graham Griffin, had an academic rather than media background. Griffin joined Griffith in early 1996 from the journalism program at the Central Queensland University in
Rockhampton. The other lecturer without a media background was Peter
Putnis, who taught at Bond before taking up the job as Dean of the University of Canberra's Communications program early in 1996. Putnis also had taught in a journalism program ~ at the University of Southern Queensland
(then Darling Downs lAE) before joining Bond. By way of comparison, a 1988
U.S. study found that only 1.4% of journalism educators had no professional experience (Morton 1994). Tertiary qualifications
If journalism lecturers are to lift their profile among their colleagues and university administrators, and the public in general, they need to gain higher qualifications. Morton's study showed that 49% of American journalism academics had doctorate degrees (Morton 1995, p60). As an indication where Australia may be headed, research by the former head of the
San Francisco State University's journalism department, Betty Medsger, herself a former newspaper journalist, found that 84% of journalism educators hired in the U.S. in the past 10 years held doctoral degrees (cited in Bloom
1996, p 3). Anecdotal evidence in Australia suggests that most recent advertisements for journalism academics in Australia nominated a doctorate, or prospective doctorate, as one of the essential criteria for appointment to lecturer or above.
In the early days of journalism education in Australia in the 70's, higher degree qualifications were not to be found among the founders of the modern era. As Maurice Dunlevy noted in 1976:
'The lecturers themselves were mainly ex-journalists with newspaper background and most were arts graduates. Few had academic qualifications in journalism and there was not a PhD among them' (Dunlevy 1976).
TABLE 10
JOURNALISM STAFF IN 1995-96 BY TERTIARY QUALIFICATIONS
INSTITUTION PhD MASTERS UNDER NONE PART- GRADUATE TIMERS Bond 1 1 0.5 0 1 Canberra 0 1 2 0 0 Central Qld 0 2 1 0 0 CSU 0 1.5 2.5 0 1 Curtin 0 2.5 2 0 0.5 Deakin 0 3 1 0 2 Edith Cowan 1 1 0 0 0 Griffith (Brisbane) 1 0 0 0 0 Griffith (Gold 1 1 0 0 0 Coast) James Cook 0 1 1 0 0 Monash 1 0 2 0 0 Murdoch 0 1 0 1 0 Newcastle 0 0 2 0 0 Queensland 3 2 4 0 0 QUI 2 2 2 0 0 RMIT 1 3 2 0 1 Sth Australia 0 1 0 2 1 Sthn Qld 0 0 2 0 1 Swinburne 0 0 1 0 0 UTS 0 0 5 0 2.5 UWS 0 1 1 0 0 Wollongong 1 2 0 0 0
Now that every course is located in a university, and many offering
postgraduate qualifications, the position has changed dramatically.
Table 10 represents a snapshot of the staffs tertiary qualifications at the
time of the survey. It shows that only three of Australia's 82 tertiary journalism lecturers (3.65%) teaching journalism full-time or half-time have no formal tertiary qualifications. The Head of the Murdoch program, Roger Simms, doesn't have a degree, but came to the position after 35 years' experience in newspapers in Perth, Melbourne, London, Manchester and
Singapore and after three years teaching in the now defunct Northern
Territory University program (Simms 1995). The two lecturers at the
University of South Australia without formal tertiary qualifications were former ABC Asian correspondent Nigel Stark, and Robert Bartlett who joined the program after 15 years' experience in print journalism (Richards 1995).
Both worked in journalism for many years in the United Kingdom, gaining
the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) trade certificate.
Of the other 69 full-time journalism teachers 12 (17.4%) have PhD's, 26 (37.7%) have Masters' degrees and 31 (44.9%) had an undergraduate qualification.
One in three (23) had a tertiary journalism qualification at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. Of those who studied journalism in
Australia, on the information available, UTS has four of its former graduates currently teaching journalism, CSU had three, and Queensland University,
Wollongong, RMIT and Canberra each have two.
Nearly half of the equivalent full-time journalism teaching staff around the country (34) were working on higher degrees. Given that 12 already had
PhD's, the number currently involved in higher degree study represents nearly 60% of the remaining 57. At the time of the survey, 20 journalism lecturers (35%) were either working on their PhD's or had submitted them and were awaiting their results, and a further 14 (about 24.5%) were enrolled in Masters' programs.
As would be expected of a group of professional writers, Australia's journalism educators are regular contributors to scholarly journals and regular presenters at academic conferences. Much of their work is published in the JEA journal, Australian ¡ournalism Review, Australian Studies in Journalism (published by the University of Queensland's Journalism Department), Media
Information Australia, the Australian Journal of Communication and the most recent, Asia-Pacific Media Educator (a joint publication of the University of
Wollongong and the City University of Hong Kong) or in the irregular publications of proceedings from JEA annual conferences. A few have had their scholarly work published in overseas refereed journals. Academic authors
While many of Australia's journalism educators are still involved professionally with the mass media, either writing regular columns or articles or involved in media relations consultancy work, a total 13, or about one in six of the current journalism lecturers have had books published, seven of them more than one title. The most prolific book publisher is Professor Clem
Lloyd, Chair of the Wollongong graduate program. He's written 10 books, including a history of the Australian Journalists' Association. Another
Journalism Chair, Professor John Henningham with three book titles to his name. Five other journalism educators -- John Hurst, formerly of Deakin, and
Sally White, formerly of RMIT, Len Granato, formerly of QUI, Penny
O'Donnell from UTS and Canberra's Maurice Dunlevy -- had written two books. The other journalism educator authors are Liz Huff from CQU, Errol
Hodge (QUT), Rod Kirkpatrick and Suzanna Layton from Queensland
University, David McKnight from UTS, Michael Rose, formerly coordinator of the UWS program, and Roger Patching. Griffith's Michael Meadows is working on a book on indigenous media in Australia and hopes to do another on media representations of various groups, as a follow-up to his PhD thesis
(Meadows 1995). Bond's Mark Pearson has completed a law text. Australia's journalism educators are involved in a number of other media-related activities, like running training courses for media groups and other media-related consultancies. Media consultancies
While mention has already been made in another context of journalism educators' involvement with various state, ethics and judiciary committees of the MEAA, others are involved in media consultancy work. Staff and students at Curtin University provide editorial and photographic services, coordinated through the School of Communication and Cultural Studies as a consultancy, to produce the regular magazine for the Motor Traders'
Association of Western Australia. Journalism Coordinator Lawrie Apps plans to expand the School's entrepreneurial activities, by appointing a coordinator
(Apps 1995). Bond's Mark Pearson and QUT's Cratis Hippocratis are involved in delivering short journalism training courses for the Rural Press group, and Deakin and Murdoch staff provide short courses for their respective Country Press Associations. UTS staff, through the Australian
Centre for independent Journalism, are involved in joint research projects with the MEAA from time to time and have been involved in research with other media and education groups (Bacon 1996).
Former Deakin staff member Murray Masterton, Wollongong's Eric
Loo and the candidate are involved in regular teaching consultancies in
South-east Asia and on the Indian sub-continent. Research projects
While a number of the interviewees said their major research projects involved work on their higher degrees, several other innovative projects indicate the breadth of the research undertaken by Australia's journalism educators. Steve Mcllwaine at James Cook was developing a CD-ROM package to teach 'effective writing' (Mcllwaine, 1995). Swinburne's Kitty
Vigo, who describes herself as a 'professional submission writer', collaborated
with colleagues on two projects (involving funding totalling $270,000) to
develop software packages of strategies for learning and how to'use the new
technologies to enhance teaching (Vigo 1995). John Hurst of Deakin
University is researching the inter-action between journalism and public
relations in the area of local government. He has surveyed every newspaper
in Australia (radio and TV stations will come later) and local government
authorities, seeking their opinions of each other (Hurst 1995).
The scope of PhD topics is another indicator of the breadth of interests
among whose who teach journalism around the country. The areas
researched include journalism educators' use of the Internet, the Internet as a
research tool for journalists, the work of foreign correspondents, the impact of
the new technologies on television news, journalism ethics, the history of
journalism education in Australia to 1987, newspaper representations of
ethnic groups, newspaper representations of women in domestic violence
situations, and the 1991 Brisbane City Council mayoral election campaign. Academic workloads
Academic workloads have always been a contentious issue, nowhere
more so than in journalism education with its reliance on non-traditional
methods of assessment for practical subjects. A normal assessment regime
for a subject in CSU's Faculty of Arts is two essays (usually of about 3,000+
words and worth 30% each) and a three-hour exam worth the remaining 40%.
There may be variations on this theme to include seminar presentations and
reviews, but there is a limit of three assessable items in each Faculty of Arts subject, except for practical subjects (Patching 1996). Practical journalism subjects aimed at teaching students, among other things, how to write to deadlines, require quite different assessment procedures. Many of the
Course Coordinators said their practical subjects often involved weekly writing assignments. The progressive assessment style marking load for these subjects, and others involving publications, be they radio news and current affairs programs or course newspapers or magazines, is much heavier and more consistent than that required for traditional liberal arts subjects.
At the University of Western Sydney, the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, which houses the three-subject journalism course, has tried to work out a workload formula to take account of the complex mix of the number of students in a particular subject, the number of contact hours per subject and the marking involved in each subject. For instance, if a practical journalism writing workshop or tutorial had 18 students for two hours, that's
36 hours of output to mark after the end of the tute. A tutorial in a liberal arts subject might involve the lecturer in marking one tutorial paper after its presentation.
All courses made allowances for some degree of teaching relief for course administration and in many cases for course and curriculum development and supervision of higher degree students. It varies, but the concession afforded the Course Coordinator for administration ranges up to half-time relief.
The Course Coordinators at only six programs made specific reference to part of the individual lecturer's workload being allocated to research. At
Central Queensland, one hour a week of the workload is allocated for further study (Sedorkin 1995). It's slightly different at CSU, where each journalism lecturer is allocated one lecture-free day a week for research or consultancy
(Patching 1996). A quarter of the 40-hour week at the University of
Queensland is set aside for research (Grundy 1995) and at QUT staff are given two hours off a normal teaching load of 14 hours a week if they are enrolled in a higher degree (Granato 1995). At Southern Queensland, lecturers are expected to spend 15 hours of their 40-hour week involved in research (Stuart
1995:1). At Swinburne, lecturers spent 12 hours a week teaching and the rest in research and contributing to the life of the university' (Vigo 1995).
The 22 courses surveyed displayed many variations when it came to how an individual lecturer's workload is worked out. About two-thirds of the programs (15) use a mechanism involving class contact hours while the other third (7) use a system of responsibility for a particular number of students. In the latter category, each staff member in an undergraduate program is responsible for between 70 and 100 student/subjects. Staff might be responsible for 100% of the assessment of 80 students in the equivalent of one subject per semester (UTS), say, while others might be responsible for 70 student subjects per year (South Australia). But it amounts to the same thing
~ 70 per year would also mean the equivalent of 70 per semester. Curtin expresses its workload as equivalent to between 20 and 25 EFTSU (Effective
Full-time Student Units) meaning responsibility for the four subjects taken per semester ~ ie between 80 and 100 student subjects (Apps 1995). At CSU, each lecturer is responsible for 90 student subjects, at Deakin if s 88 student subjects (Hurst 1995) and Western Sydney had yet to come up with a figure
(Rose 1995). At Murdoch the figure was 50 student subjects, understandably lower than the undergraduate courses since it is a postgraduate program
(Simms 1995). For the 15 programs where workload is assessed on face-to- face hours, with relief for administration, course development and higher degree supervision, it is evenly divided between those that have a range of hours and those with a set number of hours' class contact. Table 11 shows the contact hours at all 22 programs, but for the 15 which work out individual
lecturer's workloads by a formula involving hours, more than half (8) - Bond,
TABLE 11
COURSES BY STAFFS WEEKLY TEACHING HOURS IN 1995 - '96
INSTITUTIONS TEACHING HOURS PER WEEK Bond 10-12 Canberra 12-15 Central Qld 16-18 CSU 12-20 Curtin 12 Deakin 8-12 Edith Cowan 12 Griffith (Brisbane) 10-12 Griffith (Gold Coast) 13 James Cook 10-12 Monash 12 Murdoch 12 Newcastle 12 Queensland 10 QUT 9-11 RMIT 12 Sth Australia 10-12 Sthn Qld 14 Swinburne 15-16 UTS 9-12 UWS 10 Wollongong 16-18
Canberra, Central Queensland, Griffith (Brisbane), James Cook, QUT,
Swinburne and Wollongong ~ have a range. The other seven - Edith Cowan,
Griffith (Gold Coast), Monash, Newcastle, Queensland, RMIT, Southern
Queensland -- have a set number of hours. The two programs with the heaviest face-to-face hours are Central Queensland and Wollongong, both with 16-18 hours class contact expected of each member of the journalism teaching staff. At Wollongong the figure includes practical workshops and instruction.
Staff at CSU have the potential to do more hours than either Central
Queensland or Wollongong, ranging up to 20, but the average is somewhere between 12 and 20. Media Production lecturer Ian Wright, who taught the practical aspects of television news and current affairs production, as well as taking students in the media production strand for much of their practical television production, regularly had more than 20 hours' class contact per semester. But for other staff, the face-to-face hours are usually considerably less (Patching 1996).
Placing the CSU range to one side, the third highest face-to-face figure is at Swinburne, understandable since Coordinator Kitty Vigo is responsible for both subjects in the journalism program, and while the Faculty 'norm' is
12 hours per week, she estimates her face-to-face load at between 15 and 16 hours a week (Vigo 1995). There's a considerable drop then to the next highest face-to-face load ~ 13 at Griffith's Gold Coast course (Stockwell 1996).
About two thirds of the programs (14) have either an expected upper or lower limit, or set face-to-face load, of 12 hours per week. Sixteen of the 22 programs have a contact hours load of between eight and 12 hours per week.
The lowest range is at Deakin University -8-12 (Hurst 1995).
By far the easiest workload formulas to understand are those for the
Universities of Queensland and Southern Queensland. At Queensland, the staff's workload is divided equally in quarters of a 40-hour week ~ a quarter for teaching, a quarter for preparation, a quarter for research and a quarter for administration (Grundy 1995). At Southern Queensland a complicated formula results in a workload of 20 hours for teaching-related activities (as opposed to face-to-face hours), five hours for administration and 15 hours a week for research (Stuart 1995: 1).
The average face-to-face workload across the spectrum of courses is a little over 12 hours per week. Assuming most administrations work on a 35 hour week, that means the average journalism academic spends a little less than a third of the time in the classroom. That leaves the other two thirds for preparation, administration, marking, and personal research.
By comparison, a recent U.S. survey showed that journalism educators there spent three hours out of class preparing and marking for every hour in class, and were said to spend almost 30 hours a week of teaching-related activities, indicating their face-to-face load was about 7.5 hours a week
(Morton 1995).
In summary, the survey of staff at Australia's journalism programs found:
• The equivalent of 82 full-time staff were involved in journalism teaching
around the country.
• Of the full-time staff (excluding part-timers) 60% are male, and 40% female
~ almost the reversal of the percentages of those they teach.
• Comparing the number of journalism subjects each staff member can be
expected to teach in their respective programs, shows a low of 1.3 subjects
per staff member at Deakin (where there are high first-year enrolments) to
a high of six subjects per staff member at one of the newer courses, James
Cook (which expects to employ another staff member in 1997 to reduce that
figure).
• Less than five percent of those teaching journalism in Australia lack
industry experience. Put another way, more than 95% came to tertiary
journalism education from backgrounds in the media. • Less than 4% of Australia's journalism educators have no tertiary
qualifications. Nearly half are working on higher degrees. Twenty are
enrolled in PhD programs, and another 13 are enrolled in Masters'
programs.
• One in six of the current journalism lecturers have published books.
• The majority of journalism lecturers have a face-to-face teaching load of
about 12 hours per week. Chapter 6
Conclusions and discussion
This thesis found that the lecturers teaching at Australia's 22
vocational journalism courses shared much in common about what they
included in their respective programs, but that the different size, structure
and staffing of the courses meant that some graduates were better-prepared
for the media workforce than others. Differing entry requirements,
assessments, access to equipment and production outlets for student work,
clearly shown in the various comparisons in the previous chapters, lead to a diverse group of journalism graduates across the nation with differing levels of preparation for the media workforce.
While the thesis concludes there are far too many journalism students graduating each year for the number of jobs available in mainstream media, it also raises a number of issues central to the future of tertiary journalism education in Australia.
These issues include the number of courses and their intakes
(dominated by women); accreditation; the need for specific -- though not specifically practical journalism -- subjects, like law, politics and ethics in courses; the need for practical outcomes for student work; the lack of industry and union support for courses; and the need for adequate resourcing for courses.
The candidate believes that there are too many journalism courses in Australia turning out too many graduates. Before the year 2,000,
Australia's journalism schools will be graduating more than a thousand students a year into a shrinking mainstream media workforce. When the candidate began his journalistic career in the early 60's, print and broadcast media were dominated by men. The only women in the editorial department were found in the 'social' departments. Tertiary journalism courses are now dominated by women students. While there
are about twice as many men teaching journalism as women, there are twice, and in some cases three times, as many women studying journalism around the country as men. The increasing number of women in mainstream media -- particularly television -- is a trend noticed by the former Channel 7 News Director in Sydney, Terry Plane (Plane 1996), and one that can be expected to increase in the next decade as more women work their way through the hierarchy of the nation's media to senior by- line or on-air positions.
On average there's a job for only one in three graduates in the mainstream media. The candidate finds it hard to accept the view of a number of the Course Coordinators who took part in the survey that their graduates were finding work as researchers, on trade magazines and journals, and in the boutique newsletter market. That would appear to be a relatively small and quickly saturated market.
It has been the candidate's experience over 18 years teaching undergraduate journalism that the vast majority of students want to work in the mainstream of the nation's media. They accept that they may have to begin their career at a non-metropolitan newspaper or radio or television station, but they confidently expect to end up working for a capital city media outlet within a few years. Talking to journalism students at many of the campuses visited confirmed that the majority expected to the employed in mainstream media. While working for the Nine Network, the ABC, Fairfax or News
Limited are not the only rewarding jobs for journalism graduates, such prestige outlets constitute the overriding aspiration of many of the nation's journalism students. While there's nothing wrong with wanting to get to the top of their chosen profession, and no doubt some will, far more won't. It remains a conundrum where they will find jobs.
Journalism educators and their universities' senior administrators around the country ~ and in particular in the south-east corner of
Queensland — should be very concerned with the numbers of would-be journalists their courses are graduating each year.
Many of the courses have quotas on their intake. But the two biggest 'players in the field' ~ Deakin University and the University of
Queensland ~ have no quotas, leading to intakes numbering in the hundreds. Often University administrations, finding other courses not reaching their quotas, will over-enrol in the popular courses like journalism to keep their numbers up and their funding base secure. This has happened over many years at CSU (including 1997), and the
University of Newcastle saw nearly a 50% jump in their quota in 1995.
Taking a few extra here and there would appear superficially not to not make much difference to the individual university, but taken across the sector could often lead to hundreds of extra students taking journalism each year. None of the Course Coordinators who took part in the candidate's survey has seen their quota reduced in recent years. It either remained the same, or was increased slightly. While journalism courses are popular, and enjoy high entrance scores, it must be questioned whether the tertiary sector as a whole is acting responsibly in flooding a shrinking market with journalism graduates. Some universities, however, such as UTS, CSU and RMIT are
resisting the imposition of quota surpluses. For example, through the
1980's CSU held to a quota of about 60 entering the journalism strand of
the BA (Communication). When other strands in advertising and media production were added to journalism, public relations and theatre and media, the overall quota for the degree was set at 160. With the exception of theatre and media and advertising, students did not pick their major until part-way through the second semester. In recent years, at least 80 - half the entire quota for the six-strand course - have opted for either the print or broadcast strands of the course. In 1997, for the first time, students were admitted to the separate strands of the course, and the quota for journalism was 60 ~ effectively reducing the numbers taking journalism at CSU by 25%. But even the best plans come unstuck. The BA
(Communication) Course Coordinator told the Journalism Coordinator in early February, 1997, before enrolments had closed:
'You've got an extra few, 64 at the latest count' (Carroll 1997)
Arguments about academic freedom, freedom of choice and allowing students to pursue their dreams have a sour taste when you realise the majority are likely to be disappointed when they start hunting for jobs after they complete their courses. Why take so many students when they should know there are no appropriate jobs for them and it will only serve to increase the already massive over-supply of journalism graduates around the country? The courses at Deakin and UQ, in particular, both taking all comers, need to impose stricter quotas on their courses, if not at entry level, then certainly at the beginning of the second year of full-time study. University administrations are unlikely to cut a popular course like journalism, but when students can take just a few subjects in journalism at Deakin or UQ and claim to have had as much journalism training as those enrolled in the three smallest journalism programs ~ Edith Cowan,
Swinburne, and Western Sydney -- what role is there for the smaller courses? It is difficult to accept that a course with only two or three specialist journalism subjects could call itself a journalism course. At the risk of being accused of being elitist or self-serving, if s here that the process of rationalising the number of courses across the country should start. The 1997 inquiry into tertiary education in Australia may propose a suitable alternative to the current unsatisfactory situation.
Perhaps there might be a change in attitudes in universities, the industry and the union, and long-stalled accreditation proposals might gain favour. Although a process for accreditation is in place in the United
States and appears to work, there's very little support for it in Australia.
With minor exceptions, employer and union groups appear to have washed their hands of it, and while some coordinators interviewed for this survey were in favour of some accreditation system as a way of having uniform basic standards for courses, no-one seemed to have worked through how such accreditation might work and who would be involved.
Some were wary that it would create two tiers of courses ~ the so-called
'five star' courses and 'the rest'. That distinction already exists, however, in de facto form. Anyone involved in tertiary journalism education knows the top five or so courses around the country. But this is not an argument about who is best, rather about creating standards. It is an argument about ensuring that every graduate from a journalism course around the country has the same basic competencies. It is about minimum standards for an industry that constantly faces public scrutiny.
But for accreditation to be taken seriously again, there would need to be fundamental change on the part of some university administrations who are opposed to it. More importantly more interest would have to be shown in what is being taught in journalism schools by media employers and the MEAA.
There is a body of knowledge -- aside from basic skills -- that a graduate needs to have to function as a journalist. If all journalism courses are teaching is basic skills, then the Federal Government should send the bill for the 21 courses it funds to Fairfax, News Limited, and
Messrs Packer and Stokes. The candidate believes that any discussion of accreditation should include ~ as well as much of the University of
Queensland's attempt at a list of 'exit skills' -- a thorough understanding of law and ethics as they affect the working journalist and an equally- thorough understanding of the Australian system of government at local, state and federal levels.
The candidate also believes that journalism students must have a thorough grounding in ethical decision-making before they graduate.
Once they are told to do something they consider unethical by a ratings or circulation-chasing news executive, or are faced with an ethical dilemma
'in the field', it is too late unless they have formed their own set of ethical standards as part of their tertiary journalism course.
Given that courses in law, ethics and politics or government are essential grounding for the would-be journalist, it is surprising that so few courses have discrete subjects in these areas. Equally as important as exploring ethical, legal and political understanding is the need to practice the craft of journalism during the students' degree studies. For students to be able to do this, they need to have production outlets for their stories
- be they radio, television or print stories. While the output in radio from the various programs ranges from a weekly program at one of the smaller courses to seven five-minute bulletins and a half-hour current affairs program each weekday, it is surprising that nearly half the courses have no outlet for their students' practical work.
Although it is understandable because of the expense that there should be few courses with any output for their television journalism students, it is rather surprising that several courses ~ including one of the more established courses, RMIT - have no production showcasing their students' print production, especially given the relatively-cheap production software available and the capacity to publish material on the
Internet. It is imperative that all courses should strive to have regular production outlets for their students' radio and print production.
In the current climate of reduced government funding for tertiary courses, all universities face a constant battle to provide adequate resources for the spectrum of courses they offer across their campuses. Unlike the so-called 'chalk and talk' courses such as many teacher education and liberal arts degrees, journalism ~ be it broadcast or print ~ is technology and resource intensive.
Unquestionably, journalism studies are booming in Australia. The number of courses has grown rapidly, especially over the past decade. It has not been the aim of this thesis to establish how this happened in historical terms or to analyse and account for its significance. It has been intended, however, to provide a broad over-view of how journalism education is conducted in Australia in the late 20th Century.
Consequently, many important issues have only been briefly acknowledged here. An entire thesis could be erected, for example, on the objectives of the individual universities in promoting journalism so enthusiastically, often with only a scant understanding of the levels of resourcing required to achieve minimal adequate outcomes.
Is the demand for journalism by students merely a market aberration, a technical factor which will disappear as rapidly as it emerged in the face of mounting evidence that there is no commensurate supply of jobs? In short, is the journalism phenomenon illusory, as increasing numbers of more hard-headed universities in the United States seem to be recognising? Why should a much higher percentage of Australian universities offer courses in journalism than their counterparts in the
United Kingdom? Other tantalising sociological issues await analysis, like the remarkable féminisation of journalism studies, which goes far beyond the growth of female employment in the nation's newsrooms.
Despite the boom in journalism education in Australia's universities through the 1990's, there is an underlying spirit of unease among the staff who have administered and sustained it. The evidence of this thesis is that journalism educators have made great strides in academic professionalism from fairly unimpressive beginnings. These educators have coped with an astonishing proliferation of courses and students. There has not been one case of a course collapsing under the strain of intensive demand and a lack of resources. With virtually no assistance from an unreceptive industry or a government unconvinced that journalism ranks as a priority academic area, often confronted by resentment from their academic colleagues, and goaded on by often-cynical administrators, they have generally discharged their responsibihty to students with honesty and competence. All too often, the job of the journalism educator has been to temper the ignorant perceptions and baseless foundations of student expectations with the reality of the marketplace.
For the candidate, the enduring impression of his research is the effectiveness of the response at the basic pedagogical level to an inexplicable surge in demand, to a bizarre situation where the number of graduates is three times the number of entry-level jobs. There is no indication that this ratio is decreasing. Indeed, it seems likely that the gap will widen further. Who is to take the rap when, inevitably, the bubble bursts? Bibliography
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The
Survey
Questionnaire Appendix 1 University QUESTIONNAIRE
A comparison of Australian Journalism courses
Interviewee:
Title: Journalism coordinator
Date & Location:
Part 1: History of each course:
1. When did journalism education begin at the institution?
2. Who was involved in its beginnings? Staff, industry and then-AJA?
3. What form did the original journalism course take? (Diploma? A major within a traditional BA? A fiilly-fledged BA (Comm)? A post-graduate qualification? How many subjects were involved?)
4. How has the course developed over the years? (Has the form/structure changed over the years?) page 2.
5. How many core journalism subjects were there in the original course? What was the practical / theoretical split?
6. Was shorthand compulsory then? Is it now? T-line? When did it change? How is it taught within the degree?
7. How many staff taught in the original course? How many are there now? (Need to name the staffs of all journalism courses now ~ now being from the beginning of first session or semester, 1995, but names and background mentioned in depth in later section).
8. Was the course designed along the model of the traditional American journalism course? (If not, what model was used?)
9. Is all the teaching face-to-face, or do you offer journalism by distance eduction?
10. What changes are planned in the near fliture? page 3. Part 2: Course structure
I will create a diagrammatic representation of the degree structure, session / semester by session / semester. This will help for general comparisons of where various subjects are placed in the overall structure of the degree. Also, I want a copy of the handbook for the course.
1. In which faculty is the journalism department / school located? What percentage of the School / department does the journalism intake represent?
2. Is it within a general communication degree ~ ie like CSU, is it aligned with a public relations and/or advertising degree? In other words, what other disciplines are taught within the department in which journalism is housed?
3. What number / percentage of practical units are there in the 1995 degree?
4. What number / percentage of communication theory units are there in the degree? How are they threaded through the degree (ie How is the theory component developed through the degree)?
5. Are those communication theory units common with any other major or degree?
6. Is there a chance for specialisation ~ like sports journalism? page 4.
6. What other compulsory units are there in the degree (other than practical and theoretical subjects)? Law? Australian politics? AustraHan History? Australian Literature? Media and/in society?
7. What connection does the school / department have with a radio and / or TV station for publication of broadcast journalism students' material? Is material assessable?
8. What connection does the school have publishers for the publication of print journalism students' material? Is there a course newspaper?
9. What equipment does the school have for its various publications? Is there a three or five year equipment plan, or is it bought year to year? page 5.
10. What percentage / number of units in the degree are elective?
11. What is the range of electives allowed?
12. What form does work experience take within the degree? Is it a compulsory unit? Or is it just encouraged? Is it optional? Does the school have any formal arrangements with media organisations? Does the school organise it or is it done by the individual student?
13. What industry support does the course enjoy? Work experience? Where? Scholarships? Course Advisory Committee membership? What form does the committee take? How often does it meet? Guest lecturers? Equipment support? page 6.
14. What's your general view about accreditation for journalism courses?
15. How should it be done?
16. By whom?
Additional comments? page 7.
17. What role does the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance play in the degree?
18. How is the course changing to embrace the new technologies (ie. multi-media)?
19. Would the course qualify for accreditation using the AEJMC model?
The various courses will be asked to provide handbook outlines for their various compulsory units to allow for comparison. page 8.
Part 3 : Admissions criteria and admissions and graduation statistics:
1. How do you decide who will be admitted to the course? Will the admissions criteria vary for 1996?
2. What was the intake quota in 1995?
3. How has it changed over the past five years? Reasons for increase or decrease.
4. How do they measure demand for places in the course? And how has it changed over the past five years?
5. What is the drop-out rate for first, second and third years?
5A. What percentage of the intake are female? (i.e. What's the female / male split in the course? page 9.
6. What is the opinion of the course co-ordinater about the number of students taking journalism as a major degree study?
7. Are they worried so many graduates are being released each year?
8. How many journalism graduates has the particular department / school had on average over the past five years?
9. What has been the success rate of these students in getting jobs in mainstream media?
10. What employment trends have you noticed in recent years? page 10.
11. What other jobs has the course coordinator found his/her graduates have been getting in recent years? (Outside mainstream media)
(Ask the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, federally, how many jobs they think there are available each year)
12. How many media-related jobs do the various course coordinators expect their graduates to get next year?
13. Do the staff give any structured advice on job prospects? page 11. Part 4: Teaching staff
1. With the list of staff provided in the first section, obtain general CV details on each. Who are they again?
2. What are the staff members' backgrounds? (From industry, or purely academic or both)?
3. For those with an academic background, what is their highest qualification?
k What experience have they (the pure academics) had in journalism? page 12.
5. For those from industry, how long did they spend in journalism, and in what areas?
6. What tertiary qualifications do they have?
7. When did they get those qualifications? (before, during or after journalism?)
8. What major publications do the staff have? Textbooks? page 13.
9. Aside from university committees, what media-related positions do they hold?
10. What major industry consultancies are they involved in?
11. What major research projects have they undertaken in the past five years?
13. Do they have any NESB staff? page 14.
14. How is an individual lecturer's workload assessed?
15. What's the typical subject hours per week?
16. What's a normal staffer's contact hours per week?
17. What's the school's student / staff ratio?
R. M. Patching, Devised November, 1993, Revised March 1994, Updated June 1995. Improved August, 1995. Appendix 2
Diagrammatic
representations of the 22 courses BOND UNIVERSITY BA or BCOMM (BUSINESS)
SEMESTER 1 Writing for the News Media Communication Skills Information Technology Major
SEMESTER 2 Australian Media Industries Cultural and Ethical Values Management Major
SEMESTERS Sociology of News Elective Elective Major
SEMES I'ER 4 Radio or Television Journalism Elective Elective Major
SEMES I'ER 5 Newspaper and Magazine Reporting Elective Elective Major
SEMESTER 6 Editing and Publishing Elective Elective Major
Major chosen from: Communication Studies Public Relations Media Studies International Studies European Studies Australian Studies Film and Television Asian Studies Applied Linguistics Language and Applied Linguistics Japanese Studies English Studies Korean Language Chinese (Mandarin) Language Psychology
Electives available from all four schools (Business, Humanities and Socail Sciences, Law and Information Technology) UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA BA (COMMUNICATION) - JOURNALISM Electronic Journalism Model SEMESTER 1 Introduction to Communication Introduction to News Communication Research Methods Elective or Skills unit approved by Head of School
SEMESTER 2 Communication Traditions Introduction to News cont. Law of Communications or Elective Skills unit approved by Head of School
SEMESiER 3 Year-long Communications Unit Print or Broadcast Reporting Elective
S E MES 'l ER 4 Year-long Communications Unit Print or Broadcast Reporting cont. Elective cont.
SEMES TER 5 Year-long Communications Unit Television Journalism or Subediting Elective
SEMES TER 6 Year-long Conmiunications unit Television Journalism cont or Elective cont. Publication Design
COMMUNICATIONS UNITS: Communication, Culture and Technology, Mass Communication, Organisational Communication, Political Corrmiunication, Screen Studies and Communication or Special Studies in Communication A and B.
Elective choices range from politics to literary studies, professional writing and communication electives, but popular choices are politics, sociology and psychology. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL QUEENSLAND BACHELOR OF ARTS
SEMESTER 1 Introduction to Journalism A Major Elective Elective
SEMESTER 2 Introduction to Journalism B Major Elective Elective
SEMESTER 3 Broadcast Media Major Elective Elective
SEMESTER 4 Mass Media and Journalism Major Elective Elective
SEMES lER 5 Editing and Design OR Major Elective Elective Feature Writing
SEMESTER 6 Newspaper Production Major Elective Elective
Major of six subjects chosen from: Communication and Media Studies Regional Communication Drama and Theatre Studies Geography History Japanese Language Literary Studies Sociology Psychology Welfare Studies Tourism and Leisure Studies or Combined major from communication offerings
Electives are chosen from offerings of Department of Humanities as well as welfare, sociology and psychology. CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY BA (Communication) - Joumalism SEMESTER 1 Media Writing Foundations of Communication Media Presentation Australian Politics or Australian Literature
SEMES lER 2 Professional Writing Communication Law and Ethics Australian History Imaging Australia
SEMESTER 3 Print or Broadcast Joumalism 1 Australian Politics or Australia Communication Elective 1 Elective 1 Literature
SEMEsfER4 Print or Broadcast Joumalism 2 Communication Theory and Communication Elective 2 Elective 2 Research
SEMESTERS Print or Broadcast Joumalism 3 Joumalism Research Communication Elective 3 Elective 3
SEMESTER 6 Print or Broadcast Workshop 1 Print or Broadcast Workshop 2 Seminar in Contemporary Intemship Communication Issues
Communication electives chosen from: Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy, History, Politics, Literature, Politics, Economics and Photojournalism or Advertising (for Print majors) and Media Production, Visual Media or Theatre and Media (for broadcast majors) General electives chosen from: Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy, Theatre Studies, Economics, English, History, Japanese, Justice Studies, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour, Politics, Psychology and Sociology. CURTIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY BA (ENGLISH)
SEMESTER 1 Journalism 111 Literature, Language and Culture 111 School Minor Elective Introduction to Print and Electronic Journalism
SEMESTER 2 Journalism 112 Literature, Language and Culture 112 School Minor Elective Issues and Institutions
SEMES TER 3 Journalism 212 Journalism 213 School Minor Elective Elective (or in fourth semester) (or in fourth semester) Radio Current Affairs Print Journalism
SEMES lER 4 Journalism 310 Publication Law Journalism 318 Photojournalism School Minor Elective Elective (or sixth semester) or (or in fifth or sixth semester) Journalism 312 Advanced Radio News (or in fifth or sixth session) or
SEMES TER 5 Journalism 313 Print Journalism or School Minor Elective Elective 315 TV Journalism or Journalism 311 - Ethics and Issues (or in third semester)
SEMESTER 6 Journalism 314 Research for Print School Minor Elective Elective or 316 Interviewing, Writing and Reporting for TV Journalism 317 (Industry placement)
Electives can be taken from anywhere in the University, but usually from the school's other areas - Australian Studies, Creative Writing, Film and Television, Language and Culture, Literature and Theatre Arts DEAKIN UNIVERSITY BACHELOR OF ARTS
SEMESTER 1 Strands of Media Criticism Elective Elective Elective
SEMESTER 2 Comparative Journalism Studies Elective Elective Elective
SEMESTER 3 Broadcast Journalism (Radio) Elective Elective Elective
SEMESTER 4 Broadcast Journalism (Television) Elective Elective Elective
SEMESl'ER 5 The Writer and the Law Research for Writers Elective Elective
SEMESTER 6 Subediting Research into Australian Elective Elective Journalism
The 16 electives can be taken from anywhere in the University, but journalism staff suggest politics, economics, women's studies, Australian, International or Literary studies. EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY BACHELOR OF ARTS SEMESTER 1 Writing for the Media Major 1 Major 2 Elective 1
SEMESTER 2 Word Processing and Desktop Major 3 Major 4 Elective 2 Publishing
SEMES TER 3 Journalism 1 Major 5 Major 6 Elective 3
SEMES lER 4 Journalism 2 Major 7 Major 8 Elective 4
SEMESTER 5 Journalism 3 Major 9 Major 10
SEMEST ER 6 Media Studies Elective Major 11 Major 12
The journalism subjects are electives within a BA. GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY (BRISBANE) BA (COMMUNICATION)
SEMESTER 1 Text and Culture Introduction to Film and Media Elective Core Faculty of Humanities Elective Studies
SEMES I'ER 2 Communication and Research Core Faculty of Humanities Elective Elective Core Faculty of Humanities Elective
SEMESTER 3 Introduction to Professional Topics in Ethics Major Study Major Study Writing
SEMES lER 4 Professional Writing and Destop Copyright and publishing Major Study Major Study Publishing (Media Law)
SEMESTER 5 Radio Journalism Elective Elective Major Study
SEMESIER 6 Television Journalism Elective Elective Major Study
Major study chosen from Film and Media Studies Screen Production Marketing Drama Theatre Writing
The electives can be taken from anywhere across the University, or even from other Universities. GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY (GOLD COAST CAMPUS) BACHELOR OF ARTS
SEMESTER 1 Choose Eight in first two Semesters Effectiving Writing; Business Communication; Organisational and Social from: Behaviour New Conmiunication Technologies Effective Visual Production The Arts in Perspective 1
SEMESTER 2 Media for the Arts Marketing Management The Arts in Perspectice 2 Computers Technology and News and Politics Society
SEMESTER 3 Basic Film and TV Production Styles and Genres of Film and Major Elective techniques television Journalism
SEMES i'ER 4 Writing for Journalism Major Major Elective
SEMESTER 5 News and Information Gathering Media, Culture and Society Major Elective
SEMES1ER6 News and Current Affairs Major Major Elective Production
Major of six subjects from:
Theatre Writing Drama Marketing Film and Media Studies (Nathan) or Print and Broadcast Journalism (Nathan)
Electives can be taken from anywhere in the University JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY OF NORTH QUEENSLAND
BACHELOR OF JOURNALISM
SEMESTER 1 Introduction to Journalism Effective Writing Australian Political Institutions Elective
SEMES TER 2 News Gathering Techniques Modem Communication Advanced English, History or Elective Politics subject
SEMESTER 3 Print 1: News Language and Media Law Basic Photography Elective Practice
SEMESl'ER 4 Feature Writing Introduction to Electronic Basic Photography continued Elective Journalism
SEMESTER 5 Print II: Text Editing TV Journalism 1 Broadcast Journalism Elective
SEMES TER 6 Print Design and Production TV Journalism II Advanced English, History or Elective Politics subject
A minimum of six subjects must be taken from Anthropology, Economics, English, History, Politics, Sociology and Graphic Design including two in English, History or Politics at Advanced Level. MONASH UNIVERSITY BACHELOR OF ARTS (JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Introduction to Sociology A Elective Global and Regional Studies 1 Introduction to Communication Studies
SEMES I'ER 2 Introduction to Sociology B Media Studies Global and Regional Studies 2 Methods of Social Research
SEMES1ER3 Journalism Theory and Practice A Mass Communications Minor Mass Communications Minor
SEl^STER^ Journalism Theory and Practice B Journalism Technology and Mass Communications Minor Information Society
SEMES 1ER 5 Radio/TV: News and Current Comparative Journalism Minor Affairs
SEMESTER 6 Applied Journalism Research Mass Communications Minor Minor
Mass Communications Minor chosen from Australian Studies, Community Studies, Gender Studies, History-Politics, Indonesian, Photography or Sociology.
Electives can be taken from anywhere on Monash's Gippsland campus, but they are effectively confined to Humanities and Social Science subjects. MURDOCH UNIVERSITY GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM
SEMESTER 1 Journalism and Society Media Law and Ethics News Reporting and Editing
SEMESTER 2 Commentary and Review Journalism Australia Since 1945 Journalism Project or Advanced Radio Production
There are no electives in this course. NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY BA (COMMUNICATION STUDIES)
MODEL BROADCAST JOURNALISM STRUCTURE
SEMESTER 1 Writing 1 Radio lA^ideo 1 Digital Media Background to Media Studies in Australia
SEMES IHR 2 Journalism 1 Radio 2A^ideo 2 Introduction to Media and Mass Communication Conmiunication Studies
SEMESTER 3 Journalism 2 Media Ownership and Control Broadcast Journalism Radio 3A^ideo 3
SEMESTER 4 Editing Small Publications Media Structures and Research/Audience Studies Radio 4/Video 4 Practices
SEMES I'ER 5 Applied Comm Studies Radio SA^ideo 5 Ethical Issues Texts and Contexts Internship
SEMESTER 6 Journalism 3 (20 credit points) Journalism 3 (20 credit points) Television Studies Electronic Media Studies
ELECTIVE CHOICES (in this model denated by the Radio and Video subjects):
Photography Video, Sound and Radio, Graphics, Writing, Public Relations, Screen Writing, Communication Studies, Screen Studies, Cultural Studies or other courses at the University subject to approval of the Department offering the elective. QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY BA (DOUBLE MAJOR IN JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Introduction of Journalism Journalism Elective: Elective Elective Institutions in Society
SEMESTER 2 Newspaper Reporting and Writing News Communication Theory Elective Elective
SEMESTER 3 Journalism Law Journalism Elective Elective Elective
SEMES TER 4 Comparative Media Systems Journalism Research Journalism Elective Elective
SEMES TER 5 Journalism and Society Advanced Print Journalism 1 or Journalism Elective Elective Advanced Broadcast Journalism or TV Journalism
SEMESTER 6 Journalism Ethics Journalism Elective Elective Elective
Electives can be taken from virtually anywhere across the University. QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY BA (JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Media and Society Journalism Information Systems Australian Society and Culture Newswriting (Faculty Core 1) (Faculty Core 2) (School Core 1)
SEMES TER 2 * Facuity Core 3 (Choice) * Faculty Core 4 (Choice) Speech Communication for Journalistic Inquiry Journalists
SEMESTER 3 Media Production Journalism Ethics and Issues Feature Writing Elective 1 (School core 2)
SEMESTER 4 Language and Literature New Media Technologies Radio and Television Journalism 1 Elective 2 (School core 3) (School core 4)
SEMESTER 5 Subediting and Layout Radio and Television Journalism 2 Elective 3 Elective 4
SEMESTER 6 News Production Public Affairs Reporting Elective 5 Elective 6
* Choose two from: Introduction to Human Rights; Arts and Society; Texts and Meanings or Introduction to Psychology
Electives can be taken from anywhere across the University, or even at other Universities. ROYAL MELBOURNE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BACHELOR OF ARTS (JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Professional Writing Mass Media in Australa Elective Major General Elective Context Curriculum Subject
SEMESTER 2 Reporting and Newswriting Media Law and Regulation Elective Major General Elective -
SEMESTER 3 Radio Journalism Public Affairs Reporting Elective Major General Elective Communication Research Methods
SEMES I'ER 4 Television Journalism Feature Writing Elective Major General Elective News Studies
SEMESTER 5 Journalism and Society Journalism Elective Elective Major Context Curriculum Subject
SEMESTER 6 Senior Seminar and Project Journalism Elective Elective Major Context Curriculum Subject
Elective major in either History, Literature, Social Sciences, Economics, Politics or Cinema Studies. General electives must also be taken from those discipline areas. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA BA (JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Communication: Rhetoric and Introduction to Computers and Journalism Shorthand Sub Major Subject 1 Reasoning L Information Management
SEMES TER 2 Media Culture and Society Society & State: Australian C Advanced Journalism Shorthand Sub Major Subject 2 Contexts L
SEMES lER 3 Introduction to News Writing Introduction to Journalism Sub Major Subject 3 Sub Major Subject 4
SEMES lER 4 Applied Print Journalism Advanced Reporting Sub Major Subject 5 Sub Major Subject 6
SEMESTER 5 Issues in Journalism Principles of Broadcasting Media Law Elective 1
SEMESTER 6 Professional Ethics Radio Journalism Industry Internships Elective 2
The two electives in final year can be taken from anywhere in the University. The six subject sub major can be taken in Drama, Film and Electronic Media, Aboriginal Studies, Art/Design, Asian Studies, Australian Studies, Biology, Children's Literature, Economics, Environment and Geography, General Studies, History, Italian Studies, Literary Studies, Philosophy, Religion Studies, Sociology, Sport and Play Studies. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND BA (JOURNALISM)
SEMESTER 1 Communication and Scholarship Introduction to Journalism Level 1 Journalism Studies Subject Option subject (Course Core)
SEMES I'ER 2 Australia Asia and the Pacific Introductory Computing Introduction to Media Option subject (Course Core) (Course Core) Law and Ethics
SEMESTERS Print Journalism Radio Journalism Australian News Media Option subject
SEMESTER 4 Broadcast Reporting 1 or Level 2 Journalism Studies Subject Australian Political Institutions Option subject News Magazine Writing
SEMES lER 5 Independent Study Commercial Analysis World Economic and Political Elective Systems
SEMES lER 6 Broadcast Reporting 2 or Elective Study Principles and Methods of Social Elective Journalism Publication Research: Qualitative Approaches
The two electives can be taken from anywhere. The four-subject 'option study' must be taken from groups of subjects approved for the degree from areas like, Asian Studies, Commumcation Studies, Geography, Indonesian Language, Literature, Public Relations and Media Studies and Production. SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY BACHELOR OF ARTS
SEMESTER 1 Broadcast Media: Issues and Elective Elective Major Accountability
SEMESTER 2 The Fifth Estate: New Media or Elective Elective Major Special Issues in Media
SEMESl'ERS Making News - the theory and Elective Elective Major practice of journalism
SEMES TER 4 Choose three from Elective Elective Major Radio Production and Criticism A; Radio Production and Criticism B;
SEMES lER 5 Professional Attachment Program Elective Elective Major Information Society; Proimses and Policies; and
SEMESTER 6 Coimnunity Press: Process and Elective Elective Major Production
The major of six subjects is chosen from:
Asian Studies, Australian Studies, Cultural Studies, Economics, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Literature, Philosophy and Cultural Inquiry, Political Studies, Psychology, Sociology Vietnamese. The other electives can be taken from anywhere across the University. UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY BA (COMMUNICATION)
SEMESTER 1 Sound and Image Making Australia Word and Text Communication Computers and Environments Communication
SEMESTER 2 Studies Major Elective Production Major Elective Conmiunication and Journalism 1 Cultural Industries (most common) Media, Culture and Society
SEMESTER 3 Choice of three from: Choose three from:
Australian Communication Policy; Journalism 2; Communication, Culture & the Law; Print Features
SEMES lER 4 News & Current Affairs or Print Production and Subediting Aboriginal People and the Media Radio Journalism Cultural Technologies, Cultural Television Journalism Policy
SEMES TER 5 Choice of two from: Choose three from: Conmiunication History; Electronic Publishing; International Communication; Investigations; Media, Culture and Identity; Publications: Techniques & Practice;
SEMESTER 6 Professional Practice and Culture; Radio Features; Communications and Culture Specialist Reporting; Research Project Television Journalism 2; Journalism Project
The electives can be taken from anywhere in the University or at another University. UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY
BA (COMMUNICATION STUDIES)
SEMESTER 1 Reasoned Writing Media Images Australian Politics Sub Major
SEMES TKR 2 Media and Society Australian Society and Culture Research Methods Sub Major
SEMESTER 3 Information Media Communication Theory Multi cultural Studies Sub Major or Reading Cultural Forms
SEMES I KR 4 Journalism 1 Media Minor Elective Sub Major
SEMESTER 5 Journalism 2 Media Minor Elective Sub Major
SEMES TER 6 Journalism 3 Media Minor Elective Sub Major
Six sub major subjects chosen from: Asian History, Language and Culture areas; Australian Studies or History, European History; Language; Social Research; Philosophy; Textual Studies or Theory and Writing.
The Media Minor of three subjects is chosen from: Film Studies, Health Communication, Media Production, Media Studies, Public Relations, Professional Writing or Social Interaction,
The other electives can be taken from anywhere in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, but staff recommend politics, history, media studies and media production. WOLLONGONG UNIVERSITY MA (JOURNALISM) POSSIBLE MODEL
SEMESTER 1 News and Feature Writing Journalism, Ethics and Standards Radio Journalism Elective
SEMESTBR2 Journalism, Research and Current Affairs Journalism Television Journalism Elective Investigation
SEMESTER 3 Journalism Method and Practice Journalism and the Law Major Journalism Project
CORE SUBJECTS News and Feature Writing Journalistic Method and Practice Journalism, Ethics and Standards Journalism, Research and Investigation Journalism and the Law
ELECTIVE SUBJECTS Choose 5 subjects (including a double-points major project).
Journalism, History and Structure; Specialist Journalism 1; Specialist Journalism 2; Radio Journalism; Television Journalism; Print Production and Publication; International Journalism; Current Affairs Journalism; Directed Readings in Journalism; Applied Journalism Project; Advanced Journalism; News Design; Multicultural Journalism; On-line Journalism; Community Journalism; Journalism and Multi-media; Major Journalism Project (double subject) D.B. JUTOSMOM
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